Love + Contentment = Gratitude

When asked, "How do I love myself?," Thich Nhat Hanh began with these words: "You breathe in. This is an act of love." Can you allow yourself to believe this? Can you begin turning towards yourself with love simply by breathing in? There is a depth of acceptance and compassion here that melts my heart. 

When we practice yoga,  we include the idea of not harming our self.  Can we accept the radical practice of contentment - being fine with what is so -- not falling into the wanting/needing/regreting/envying? Can we see that this inhale is the resource that sustain us, and through which we are free to release ourselves from the patterns of thought and action that harm us and others? This simple breath in -- this inhale -- can be enough to bring us a feeling that in this moment we have what we need. (Try this when confronting the issues of overeating over the holidays!) 

Thanksgiving is a pleasant moment to stop a few minutes and acknowledge the wonder of the body in which we experience life. It is the ground for all our opportunities for adventure and inquiry that being a human being allows us, no matter what we own or what we look like, who we are with or what we eat! The essential quality of breathing in is such a gift to the self - the living body! And with each inhale there is the release into the exhale, the letting go of the gripping, the fear, the worry over whatever it might be that limits your sense of being fully happy with who you are right in this moment. 

May your next few weeks of shorter days and longer nights, be exhilarating! Enjoy the cold winds and the contrasting warmth of an interior life. Allow each inhale to bring you happiness and each exhale to express gratitude for that. Take a few minutes now -- and later -- to breathe in love towards yourself - giving yourself what you need; and breathe out all that you no longer need - allowing yourself to accept what is so and feel content.

I feel grateful for this breath, for the breath we share. As I recenty told one student struggling with the uncertain outcome of another round of chemotherapy, "Even when I am sleeping, I am sharing the breath with you." That comforts us both.

Explore your ability to turn towards yourself with love in this very next inhale -- and allow your exhale to feel sweet. Enable your sense of contentment! These two principles are part of the underlying core of yoga practice. Not to harm, Ahimsa, is one of the Yamas (social disciplines), and to accept contentment, Santosha, is one of the Niyamas (inner disciplines). The Yamas and Niyamas are part of the Eight Limbs of Yoga as described in Patanjali's Sutras. Fertilize the seeds of gratitude, "Breathing in Love, Breathing out Contentment."

Ironing: Present but not Perfect

The season of ironing has returned. The school year has begun, the temperatures have dropped slightly and it is time for me to catch up with the ironing pile of my husband's shirts that has waited through the summer, growing slowly. He has always worn cotton shirts, and somehow over the past 25-30 years, I've taken on the task of keeping them somewhat free of wrinkles.

It was with some surprise that having started ironing the back of the fifth shirt, I could not remember if I had completely ironed the back of the previous shirt. Stunned for a moment, I stood, wracking my brain and then I actually went over and looked at it.  I had indeed ironed it. Where the heck was I when that happened that I couldn't remember doing it? Was I on automatic pilot?

No, not on automatic, but more present in the moment than in recording the results and committing my actions to memory. As I am ironing, I am acutely aware of the texture of the fabric under my hand and the weight of the iron, feeling the heat of the steam rising, the breeze from the window. My eyes, hands and mind are synchronized with my breath and my attention is fully on what I am doing. Or so I thought. In fact, my heart is also holding the person for whom I am smoothing out the wrinkles, in some ways encircling the shoulders upon which this placate will rest, envisioning the arms and hands that will emerge from this sleeve, once it is rolled up, as it always is when my husband is in action.

So how can it be that I am so present, yet I've finished one shirt and begun another without memory and certainty?  Perhaps it is not the goal of my action to remember ironing the back of each shirt. The goal of my action is to act in the moment, transmitting my love for my husband, and this is what engages me. My physical attention is fully in the present moment, observing the weave of the fabric beneath my hand and the implications of the back pleat for my task. Will the shirt be perfectly ironed because of my full attention? Perhaps not, especially since there is quite a pile and I have evolved a speedy treatment! If I wanted perfectly ironed shirts, I would ask my husband to do it as he is the one who attachs to the specificity of physical results. This is part of what makes his woodwork and sculpture so beautifully crafted. Yet even without attachment to perfection, the task is accomplished, and my goal satisfied.

In the moment of ironing, I am accomplishing a repetitive quotidien task, acting out of love, savoring textures and sensations of being and doing, and relaxing my grip on perfection and judgment.  For me this is yoga off the mat, and I am grateful that my attention was called into question by my thinking mind so that I could see my action for what it truly is. How many times in a seated meditation does the mind ask, "what are you doing? where are you?" and answers itself, "I've taken my seat and I am meditating."  This is harder to count than even counting the breath itself!

Making the offering, Being the offering

I've been enjoying poems from Gregory Orr's 2009 collection, "How Beautiful the Beloved." There is simplicity and deep resonance of losing oneself in the grace of love at the same time yearning to hold what will inevitably be lost. Everything is impermanent.

"All those years
I had only to say
Yes.

    But I couldn't.

Finally, I said Maybe,
But even then 
I was filled with dread.

I wanted to step carefully.
I didn't want to leap.

What if the beloved
Didn't catch me?
What if the world
Disappeared beneath my feet?"

As a teenager I was put in the position of making the family meals, and I've held that role fairly continuously throughout my adult life. I don't remember thinking of food as a token of love, and in those early years it was a heavy load on top of my schoolwork, my awakening political awareness and the swirl of emotional troubles between my parents. As a wife and mother I came to feel the job of feeding as a deeply nurturing one.

"So many were given only
A dream of love,
So many given a glimpse,
And that from such a distance.

Who am I to be ungrateful
Who saw the beloved
Face-to-face?"

One month ago my husband and I essentially became vegan, eating no meat, no dairy, no processed grains, sweeteners with the addition of eschewing all cooked and most uncooked oil. (For more on this, see my related blog eat2thrive.blogspot.com.)

"Surrender everything. Give up
All that's precious --
That way you won't be tempted
To bicker with yourself
Over scraps you still control.

Besides, who knows the depth
Of her pity? Who knows
How far down
He can reach with his love?"

Food has become transformed into a vast array of beautiful blessings. Each fruit, vegetable, bag of grain, bowl of soup, pot with simmering leeks, plate with the stain of beets, crunch of jicama and scent of lime or garlic brings such gratitude and pleasure.

We spend way too much time imagining ourselves to be lacking something, avoiding something. This pretending to be incomplete and unworthy stands directly in the way of living our fullest life in this moment as we actually are.

Again from Greg Orr:
"How beautiful
The beloved.

Whether garbed
In mortal tatters,
Or in her dress
Of everlastingness --

Moon broken
On the water,
Or moon
Still whole
In the night sky."

Some Words of Rabindranath Tagore

Sent (on April 29) by Ruth Waddell (my aunt) to Josh Holland (my father) in condolence for the death (on April 27)of Anabel Holland (my mother), read when received by Josh (in hospital) on May 5th by Sarah Meredith (me).

Read at his graveside by me on May 8, 2011


Peace, my heart, let the time for the parting be sweet,
Let it not be a death but completeness.
Let love melt into a memory and pain into songs.
Let the flight through the sky end in the folding of the wings over the nest.
Let the last touch of your hands be gentle like the flower of the night.
Stand still, O Beautiful End, for a moment, and say your last words in silence.
I bow to you and hold up my lamp to light you on your way.


I know that this life, missing its ripeness in love, is not altogether lost.
I know that the flowers that fade in the dawn,
the streams that strayed in the desert, are not altogether lost.
I know that whatever lags behind in this life laden with slowness is not altogether lost.
I know that my dreams that are still unfulfilled, and my melodies still unstruck,
are clinging to some lute strings of thine, and they are not altogether lost.

April Come She Will

I've been traveling strange terrain these past few weeks. From barely melted snows in upstate New York, to full blown cherry blossoms in Washington, DC, to palm trees and azaleas in New Orleans, to uncurling greens on the bushes in Brooklyn, and again the brilliant yellow of daffodil slopes in Maryland. My heart is traveling strange terrain and the world around me seems to reflect the vastness, fragility, beauty, starkness, and unpredictable but inexorable movements of life and death.

For the first time I missed a class at my neighborhood studio where I've taught since Inauguration Day 2009. By missed, I mean simply couldn't show up and had no substitute available to replace me. My father's urgent medical situation required my full presence. There was much sweetness in teaching last week and hearing that a few of my beginning students stayed to practice together.

I've sat with my mother, who is floating on a gentle sea of pain medications and freedom from the constraints of conventions. The tenderness with which she touches her own hands, strokes her own cheek as though forming the shapes in clay; she opens her eyes with clarity and space so enormous that my feet feel lighter as I meet her gaze. She has drifted quite a way in this nearly a month in hospice care. Her room at the group home feels like a soft safe nest. What an act of grace that after a life of such turmoil she is finding her way with such an openness of heart.

I've held my father's hand as he went through procedures, humming the violin part to his humming the viola part of duets we have played, keeping his attention aloft of the changing chest tubes and with the breath itself. His clarity of mind and good humor more endearing than my heart can bear, and his suffering finding a place within my own ribs. He stood by me through all my childhood surgeries, fainting as the anesthesia took me out to sea. I can still feel his two large hands holding my one right hand. So I gaze at the delicate fuzz of spring tree branches against the sky as I walk around the assisted living facility to which I am hoping he can move when, in his words, "the white cells win."

What is a yoga practice? I find my center, my core self, sitting on the Amtrak train speeding from New York to Washington to New York to Washington. I breathe into that three-dimensional space where all three of his chest tubes are draining away the mess that ought not be there. I walk up the stairs to my 4th floor apartment, grateful that my sprained ankle is recovered enough, knowing that each step I take is a practice in letting go of expectations and outcomes; that each breath is truly the gift of presence, in this moment is the fullness and freedom of my life.

There are so many of us on the path. The footprints fit my feet perfectly no matter which way I turn. I feel graced by each and every one of you. I will return your gaze even when I have no eyes with which to see.

Nothing is Wrong, It's just Fear

It wasn't hard for me to tell my mother that she could let go if that's what was right for her. It slipped out as though it was always there, our eyes smiling at each other. She was fingering the scarf I made for her that only a month ago she said had reminded her of the taste of strawberries. Somehow, I was completely calm and relaxed telling her that I will miss her but that it was okay. Maybe it was because I could feel that the stream was already flowing in that direction. Perhaps it was because she seemed so happy to be floating on the water headed towards the falls. I can hear the falls, I just don't know exactly how far away they are.

Attachment. I suppose it is the big attachment, that we hold on to the idea of being alive, of other people staying alive, that life is what we hold dear and hold on tight. The practice of seeing my own attachment to anything, an opinion, an outcome, a schedule, a relationship, has been so revealing of how I make meaning where there are really just constantly shifting conditions whose visibility depends on the light.

So I sit in one place, open to the deep contentment I saw on her face, feeling the fear of the work I will have to do once she is gone, knowing that her presence is not some thing nor does it belong to anyone, not even to her. Her presence is the surface of the water that is everything in the sea: wave, froth, air bubbles, sand, beach, conch shells, sand crabs, sky, wind, the sound of the falls in the distance.

I don't know the way, but all paths lead there.

Absorbing What I Already Know

Cutting the grass again
Only this time it is in answer
To my need to be engaged
Doing something
Moving with only my energy
And the lay of the land to guide me.
Walking in a loop
Preferring to find all my corners rounded
following the circles of my thoughts.
Around and around they cycle back
Making an extended
Concentric web
Of love
Around Emmett
Our 4-year old cat.

Yup, going blind
All the way and fast
Says the doc.
Not quite there yet, though.
Still seeing about 20 percent of light in one eye
Or so he thinks.
Following sound and smell
Gently maneuvering with whiskers
Brushing the sides and edges of things
Cold wet nose touches my leg gently
Before he rubs his full side body.
Emmett purrs in his never-very-loud voice
Just to be in the same space
Where I am sitting on my yoga mat.

What is it to be a cat with no eyes
Yet can still catch a fly – if it moves.
Must be the sound that tips him off.
Since he was very young he descended gradually
Paws reaching for what might be there below him
Though did not stop climbing onto desks
Or up into trees
Or on top of refrigerators.
Lately he has given up the refrigerator.
His world darkens, or does it just become gray?
The doc couldn’t say.

Mourning for a life he will not have
My husband reminds me
That Emmett gets the life he gets
Just like we do.
And he does have us
Here and now
Weaving this web of love
In every space in which he finds himself
Giving him as much freedom as he can bear.
Today we agreed to let him continue going outside
Only in daylight and when we are near.
Besides he can go in and out by himself
With our neat swinging door
Until he can’t.
And that day may come too.

In Savasana sometimes I offer images
To students whose eyes are closed
But whose minds are open.
Perhaps for Emmett I can do the same.
At times when he is in his car box
I bring up images of the grass where we are going
Of the way the light filters through the leaves
Of the sounds and smells from the porch
And he purrs from the back seat.
My practice will be with eyes closed this evening.
Feeling my own feet on earth
Finding my heart beating,
Listening for my breath.

Cherishing this opportunity
To offer all there is of love
What changed today was in the mind
The heart has been here all along
Watching
Wondering
Making sounds
To guide the blind.

Practice, Practice, Practice

At what point can I release attachment and simply accept without judgment? I try to begin with myself. Maybe that's the hardest place to start, maybe it's the only place to start. The rising sun doesn't have meaning in its relationships to everything it reaches. It tinges this building or illuminates that quadrant of the sky without adding significance. It is the mind that bestows the myriad stories of soul and heart, of life giving force or cruel burning heat to that rising sun. Infinite beauties and poetic forms inhabit the mind, right alongside the darkest most destructive forms. Attachment to conditions gives meaning, and can turn quickly into a death trap, literally or figuratively. I think conflict is as easily about being wrong as about being right. Either way, the attachment cuts me off from being alive.

Letting go is frightening, so I practice it. I need time to get used to it. I take it a little at a time. Maybe it begins with just letting my belly soften as I breathe. Let that gripping go. From there, I can remember, again, to release my shoulder blades down my back, allow my sitting bones to settle into the earth's gravity, and something softens just a little at the edge of my brain as I do this. There are lots of ways to practice yoga, and the asana sequences and conditions under which the practice takes place. Even there, I shy away from attachment to a particular way or act or sequence.

Of course structure is helpful when I let go. It helps assuage the fear of letting go to have a container that feels that it will hold me... the body perhaps, or the floor, or a larger concept of being that is outside these physical boundaries. Yoga practice offers this container. Meditation is all in my head, yet what happens is that I work my way into a space that is beyond my thinking. In the abstract that sounds cool, but sometimes the way there is really scary. That moment when you realize you have let go and there is nothing holding you, just like a physical letting go and free falling, has its exhilaration and terror all mixed together. It is at that moment that I remember I am breathing, breathing.

Many years ago, when I was not quite five years old, I died on an operating table and chose to turn back. As I mentioned in my last post, my dad's voice called me back. He used to come into the operating room with me, to be there as they put me under. And almost without fail, he would start to pass out as I went down. Now I can feel how he was being my container as I let go, though I think he didn't know it then, nor now that we will celebrate his 89th birthday together next week. So I practice letting go still, and discover again and again that love is that container beyond all physical boundaries, whether I am breathing or eventually choose to return to light.

Dementia Reveals the Swirling of Real and Unreal

I've just been spending time with a dear old friend who has dementia. Her condition is reflected in significant memory losses, some anxiety and paranoia, with some deeply emotional and personality magnifications, and occasional confusions about words. One of the aspects of her behavior that is startling and evocative, is her way of asking the simplest questions, the answers to which reveal the substrate of human relationships. She asks, "Whose house is this?" as she walks up the stairs in the house in which she has lived for many decades. She looks around her, discovering everything with delight and pleasure, but when told "This is your house," her face darkens in confusion. She meets my gaze and asks, "Really? How can that be?" Of course I can tell her the story of how this house came to be hers, but her questions ask something so much deeper. She often simply asks, "Where am I?" and for that the answer is also simple and deeply complex.

Much of the time she seeks a sense of safety, some reassurance within the boundaries she feels and sees, that she is protected and secure. This can be physical but is often much more than that. She seeks protection for her heart, and of the transitional spaces in which she now functions. Beautifully dressed for an occasion honoring her partner, surrounded by guests she has known for years, she will engage each person with charm and standing quite close, offer sotto voce intimations of shared secrets. "Only you know exactly how that happened!" she might say with an endearing smile and light touch on the arm, without giving any more of a reference. Each guest receives her gift of intimacy with grace and honor, to be brought in close, and treated with such trust. Substance has receded into the most essential materials with which we connect and sustain each other.

When tired or anxious, she grasps at a defense and holds firm, while some around her try to distract her and others speak directly to the underlying causes of the fear or anxiety. There are no more corrections, when people say, "No, you were not there that time," or "I didn't say that," "You never did learn to do that," or any other denials of her momentary realities. She will move on, taking each moment fully as it is, creating the network of supporting evidence she needs to convince her self, or others, in that moment. The purity with which she asks, "Would you like my cup?" or "Are you staying?" makes each moment so full of grace.

I can't help but wonder why we spend so much time trying to convince ourselves and others to agree about data and facts between us that may well be simply illusion. We put way too much meaning and false value in controlling and manipulating this fluid surface and its meanings. It seems so clear to me now that when my friend joyfully exclaims "That's my son!" there is really no longer any need for him to ask her, "So what's my name?" as if that is a test of her memory. She clasps his middle-aged face in her hands and says with a voice saturated with love and longing, "You were a beautiful baby boy." What more is there to say about anything, other than "I love you?"

As the Sea to the Shore Love Is

"First there is a mountain, then there is no mountain, then there is." Donovan song

How do we celebrate love? Our culture makes quite a commercial show of objectifying this story. Yet we cannot measure love, nor hold on to it, nor even make good on promises we make about it. We can say we love, and then turn around in disappointment towards that same person in the next moment. We can offer love and find that which we extend to another is met with conditions and assumptions. This causes such suffering!

Imagine the ocean eternally lapping upon the sandy shore, or crashing in spattering froth against the rocky ledges. Each time the wave begins its rise, powerful and urgent, it meets the infinite patience and solidity of the shore. Whether it is in the form of grains of sand or a wall of rock, the shore receives the wash of the wave, and returns it to itself. Perhaps gradually over time the distinctness shifts a bit, as the sand filters into the ocean, moving the shore, or the rock slowly disintegrates into the sandy ocean floor. Perhaps this is the interaction of love. Water is not stone, stone is not water, yet both hold steady for one another, simply being in ways that do not interfere with the basic being of the other substance. They interact as is their nature, and create beauty beyond description for those who witness their relationship.

We can change the stories we make about love. We are no longer stuck with princes who rescue distressed princesses, or mermaids who turn themselves into foam rather than stand up as the true beloved, or knights in shining armor who must take on one deadly adversary after another to prove their feelings are true.

I can allow my love to be the space in which my loved ones can breathe. My love can condense down like maple syrup from the sap of trees, over long years of slow reductions, purifying and deepening until transformed. I feel the most growth from letting go of the definitions and expectations, the requirements and misplaced check lists. My parents have no criteria they must meet for me to measure their love, it is enough that we have been present for one another, with all our messy ways, in all these years; my husband can simply meet my gaze day after day and I feel at home on the planet; my children and friends, students and neighbors by finding their own hearts can fill mine.

Happy Valentine's Day. First there is a mountain, then there is no mountain, then there is. And so with love.

Peace as a Practice of Non-Attachment

Self interest is a great motivator. The day we come to realize that the welfare of all beings is truly in our self interest is the day peace will arrive on earth.

This is not a superficial idea, nor does it require the denial of a sense of self, nor the eradication of conflicting conditions. There is an interesting merger of idealism and practicality in the concept. Often I hear the saying that "peace begins with the self." I agree with this. It is like the concept of love, we can often be more caring, compassionate and thoughtful of others than we actually are of ourselves. At least we think that is so, until we find that we can harbor all kinds of complicated negative feelings as a result of the "good" we are trying to do. Love must begin with the self as well.

The practice of non-attachment is one with many concentric circles and layers. Non-attachment - the idea of letting go of outcome and just giving yourself whole heartedly to the act itself - is a strong foundation of love and peace. To really experience non-attachment you must let go of judging what you are doing or how it is going or how it will turn out. This does not mean acting irresponsibly as though none of what you do has consequences! It is a matter of opening to the possibilities that by giving all you have to the situation, that which is possible will come into being whatever that might be. That, in and of itself, brings a peaceful and deep level of being in the moment. Feeling that way, full and in the moment, you can see the roller coaster but don't have to take the ride. It is not your mission to change what other people do - or to manipulate yourself or others in spite of differing points of view or conditions. Feelings of compassion come more easily if you are not judging and attempting to control other people's experiences or their own evaluations of their experiences. You might more easily see how they fall into traps, suffer, find their ways out of traps, help make the traps less seductive, and perhaps even turn away from the traps towards non-attachment themselves. This compassionate non-attachment is the beginning of peace.

Non-attachment is not disengaged. This is caring about everything rather than not caring about anything or caring only about one aspect. Quite fundamentally the opposite, caring fully and being open to relinquish qualifying criteria, offers the chance to see more openly, more entirely. Exist in your full potential and you can offer all that you are.

Late last fall I walked several times a week past a huge overhanging rose bush on my way to teaching. I was struck by the intensity of the beauty of the few remaining buds and blooms at that late time of year. Yet just as those classic symbols of beauty held their own against the cold and grayness of the late autumn, the spent blooms also shone with all the depth of perfection in their faded, exuberant layers of browning petals, the loosening of their hold, and the sheer abandonment of their former form. The leaves of the bush were in every stage - green, new, brown, curled, fallen. The sidewalk littered with petals and leaves, the detritus of organic matter that is the same essence of rose as the tightly held bud. There is deep joy in this combining of non-attachment with non-judgment. Openness to the fullness of what is, heart filled by the vastness of life in all its many aspects. Compassion brings joy and sorrow, as does love. Non-attachment brings compassion and possibility, as does peace.

Love Opens My Beginner's Mind

Love is such an enormous part of what makes our human life feel "worth living." Seems to me there is really nothing more complex or embedded in our lives. Our culture attaches all manner of behaviors and assumptions to ideas of love, and has historically, and our personalities and characters further embellish our understandings and behaviors. Rather than analyzing all of this, I am learning to approach love as part of my yoga practice, opening myself to possibilities, releasing judgmental mind, strengthening and stretching that which is already part of me, noticing the roller coaster and my fistful of tickets.

The truth of love is undeniable, as reading an ancient fragment of poetry expressing love lost can bring a modern person to tears, or the birth of a mythically beloved child can open the hearts of total strangers.

This day after Christmas reverberates with emotional markers for me. My youngest son was born in the morning on this day in 1990, and five years ago (2004) there was a catastrophic tsunami that wiped out entire villages across the world. Both still shake my heart.

This morning, George Harrison's song "Oh My Love" struck a very deep chord with me. Hearing or reading the simple words seems to bring forth the open spaces and possibilities of beginner's mind. It describes the outward movement of our defining edges, the softening of defenses and attendant discovery of our multi-faceted way of being, and the deep release of the individual into the eternal winds.

On this day, I encourage you to feel the intense, simple, and universal nature of your heart, opening fully to joy and sorrow. Rather than circumscribing your structure, like a building, shutting your doors and windows against the cold of winter, as if you could contain the heat of your heart, saving it for some future moment, or protecting its past performance. Soften, melt and breathe into the whole experience of this moment, like a courageous beginner open to love in all its ways of being.


Oh my love, by George Harrison

Oh my love
For the first time in my life
My eyes are wide open
Oh my lover
For the first time in my life
My eyes can see

I see the wind
Oh I see the trees
Everything is clear in the world
I see the clouds
Oh I see the sky
Everything is clearer in our world

Oh my love
For the first time in my life
My mind is wide open
Oh my lover
For the first time in my life
My mind can feel

I feel the sorrow
Oh I feel the dreams
Everything is clearer in my heart
I feel life
Oh I feel love
Everything is clearer in our world