Equanimity as a Method of Problem Solving

My personal problems are so insignificant in the scheme of things, and yet my reactivity can completely consume my energy.  The facts are clear that if I am kind, the world around me is a better place for other beings. The facts are clear that if I am not gripping one opinion above all others, there is more room for change and possibility. The facts are clear that there is enough misery and desperation in the world without my petty emotional attachments and rationalizations.  But even so, I am a human being and my basic design puts me and my emotional upheavals at the center of my universe, until I learn how to see that pattern and shift my weight towards equanimity.

I saw a portion of a PBS Newshour program in which children of displaced families were being treated for the most severe life-threatening conditions of malnutrition, basically babies and children spending their earliest time here on earth starving instead of growing.  One doctor was asked, "who does she blame, or what is the primary cause of this terrible situation?' She answered, "the war." What I saw in a matter of a few moments on television is just the surface of a very deep and deadly problem my species seems to have... the inability to embrace each other with compassion and acceptance. War is the expression of conflict -- acts of war are horrific destructive behaviors towards our own human family, and the very world in which we all live.  The doctor, in spite of the unbearable sadness, devastating cruelty, and endlessness of the situation, is dealing with families, the dying, her co-workers, her community with compassion and acceptance; working flat out to ease the suffering for those for whom nothing can be expected to change for the better, and somehow being an island of equanimity in the sea of chaos.

Every mouthful since that program aired has brought me gratitude, sadness, and confusion. I walked to my local food co-op to buy groceries, passing a flattened baby bird on the sidewalk with a sparrow on a wire above me singing ceaselessly. This little bird baby, like the little human baby who weighs 7 pounds at 11 months old, had a beginning with possibilities. What can I do to change these outcomes?

I can walk more slowly, make eye contact, listen more and speak less, offer more and take less, support those who are in positions to take actions that I cannot take to directly assist others who are suffering, prioritize generosity, do my utmost to do no harm, and most importantly see my own reactivity and self-importance more honestly as distractions.

It hurts so much that communities and governments do not open their borders and coffers and food supplies to their own citizens in need, nor to other people from or in other places, without asking for some kind of power or control in return. What if that power and control is useless in the face of the loss we are living with as a species, as a family? So I will continue to build myself as a safer place for others, developing my practice as a person of no importance who is changing the world by observing my own gyrations as gyrations, and growing compassion and acceptance in every way I can.

A life could be spent making pilgrimages to places where human beings have been unspeakably cruel to each other, but perhaps more can be done by making every place I go part of a path that offers equanimity, compassion and acceptance. And so I will continue being joyful, even as the weight of sorrow becomes part of my normal weight.  Perhaps I can make space for others to find these two parts of the same possibility and act from a state of balance. The image in this post is a painting my father did in a food court in suburban Maryland. He looked for beauty and love in relational spaces. Even though he has been gone 7 years, his vision still comforts me.

In Death Shyamdas Reinforces the Purpose of Life

On January 20, 2013, a beloved person in the world of bhakti yoga, kirtan and scholarship in the ancient texts of yogic life, vanished in a motorcycle accident. There were events on his calendar stretching well into the future, and memories in the minds of uncountable thousands from his presence in the past.

His was a practice of devotion. In this he was precise -- translating seminal texts from ancient languages in order to deeply understand them and as a byproduct share them with the rest of the English speaking world. In this he was spiritual -- chanting the 108 names of his beloved with no boundaries between his sense of self and the beloved.  In this he was an ordinary traveler -- juggling his busy life, his devotional practices and his own practical requirements like the rest of us.

Each moment of life is life itself. When the vacant body is all that remains and the spirit has departed, it is shocking to the rest of us. How vivid the lesson that it is only in this moment, THIS MOMENT, that our life unfolds. Chanting, studying, smiling at each other, tasting the food, seeing the mist, feeling the sorrow, opening the heart.

Shyamdas continues his voyage, and his teachings. A friend was hoping that he had the name of the beloved on his lips as he departed. We can't know about that until it happens to us, but I carry this strange sense that he spilled open beyond all borders in that moment, when defining a name or a beloved ceases to have meaning.

Let's live, shall we? Deeply, fully, and right now. Dig in! Open up! When our moment comes - young, old, well, sick, anticipated or unforeseen - let it be a joyous celebration for those who remain in the body, present.

For books of his translations: http://shyamdas.com/books/

Ahimsa & Non-Attachment

Judgmental thinking is by its nature negative, isn't it? Every time I think, "I ought to be doing x-y-z," or "I can't x-y-z," I am in a small way judging what I am doing. The idea that there is something other than what is so, other than what I am actually doing, that would be "better" for me to do, reeks of wishing I was other than what/who I am. This is harmful to me. It is not the same thing as choosing to do something different; it is negative thinking about what I am doing. It seems small and without substance most of the time, but it reaches deeply into devaluing the self. There is a sense of insufficiency, of making mistakes, that the thought or act is not the "right" thought or act. Attaching judgment like this to the self leaves little room for acceptance and the growth that naturally occurs when those "good/bad/should have" barriers to possibility are left open.

I felt joyous this morning, and noticed that with surprise and amusement since today is the first anniversary of my father's death, one week after my mother's death last year. How was I "supposed" to feel? The sun lit up the dew on the grass, illuminating the delicate petals of the crabapple against the intense blue sky. Images of the hospital room appeared in my memory, of those last hours at my Dad's side, in which we gazed into each other acknowledging the transition taking place. Nodding at this as memory, knowing the physical man is gone, I walked into the kitchen and began cutting the one grapefruit remaining in the refrigerator. It was an unplanned celebration. Every morning my father's morning ritual was just this, a half a grapefruit or a slice of melon depending upon the season. A deep pleasure filled me, relishing being alive as the flavor burst forth in my mouth. I remember him telling me that it was that first bite of grapefruit that would get him out of bed in the morning.

Perhaps on this day I "ought to be" sad, and there are moments in any day when I find that can be the dominant feeling, yet I am essentially grateful for this human experience in its fullness. Glad I was able to connect to my parents before I lost them. Glad that I was present for the moonlit night and this sunlit morning. I am not attached to my sorrow or my joy. I am not looking for symbolic capsules in which to place my heart. Yet the crabapple my mother gave me is now in full bloom, and the perigee moon (the fullest moon of the year when the moon is closest to the earth) rose last night, just as it did on the solstice last year when my father ruptured his esophagus. And there was one grapefruit left in the fridge this morning. It was delicious.

Watering the seeds: suffering or equanimity?

The magnolia tree does not consider its fallen petals, and the tulip does not anticipate its moment of perfect bloom. We humans seem to live so much in just those moments -- stuck in our sorrows and waiting and reaching for that something that may or may not bring all we want. I saw the litter of magnolia petals carpeting the sidewalk and was struck with their beauty, knowing full well that they were on the road to decomposition and disappearance. It felt similar to the last stages of my mother's life, when she was on hospice and functioning at the most concentrated and essential level of her character. How beautiful she seemed to me, no longer controlling or grasping, no longer measuring or despairing! There was a complete quality in her pleasure in holding a cup of tea, in her sensation of the texture of her own throat with her wandering fingers.

I planted onions a year after her death, scattering the fertilizer four inches below where the roots would grow, as I pushed the tips of the slightly thickened grass-like seedlings just under the surface of the warm earth. A cold wind was blowing, and the sun sparkled literally on the new green in the field grass. In that moment I could be complete, doing this action in this moment, knowing that some of these little onions will thrive and others may not, that there are responsibilities of watering and weeding, harvesting, and curing, eating, and savoring -- yet with no thinking about that. Each of those aspects will follow in their time if I nurture the seed of the moment. In my planting I chose to experience growth and possibility rather than loss and sorrow.

So oddly enough in grieving my mother's death, I found myself watering the seeds of being. This was one of her dearest gifts to me, showing me that the blooms do not grieve their petals as they fall to the earth.

I am not gone, not mist either

The enormity of being present through these strange and miraculous weeks, in which both my parents died, has left me unsure of my physical shell. I feel the breath, counting on it as a reminder of what it takes to describe the line between living and not living. Its qualities have changed, and I wait for the waves of gratitude to return.

I cut the first asparagus. I weed the blueberries and untangle the mesh netting from the delicate branches budded for bloom and berry. There is celebration and grief in my every action.

It is too easy to say that I am quietly turning my attention towards the earth. More complex to draw my heart away from tending and caring for the people I love who have drifted out of this realm. My eyes soften just below the horizon, widening the view without focusing.

Memory and experience are collections of my mind, rotated at will to allow for varied levels of engagement and reaction. My heart beating has its own imperative, driving my body and leading to possibilities that calibrate a normal life.

The apple branches dip just in front of the window, buds amid leaves, blooms amid twigs. This was true last year too, and without any storytelling, the birds peck at the damp bark.

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.

The Beginning and End of Meaning

Every moment hangs like a water droplet from the edge of the leaf.
Luminous, tenuous, distorting and beautiful beyond all words.
Why rush through the living and the dying?
Why push the moments into cubicles of attachment?

This is pain.
That pulling, wrenching feeling of wanting something other than what is.
That darkening tenderest of reaching for that which is not so.
That sharp claustrophobic grasping to get beyond the already piled and defined.

Oh it is an odd and disorienting feeling to let this droplet be.
Letting the droplet be detailed -- only as an illusion that it is separate from the air, the water and the elements that define it in the mind as a droplet.

Imagine you are the surface of the sea.
Experience this.
The rain. The air.
The spray. The currents.
The waves, the deepest fault lines.
Non beginning, non end.
Experience being.

What if all we could ever hope to be is exactly what we are in this moment?

This is joy.
Feeling open to the gentle movements of breath.
Sitting in silent vast spaces where mothers birth and mothers die.
The sounds are the echo of inhales and exhales.

Month of March.
This transitional instant,
when I can feel the beginning and end in the mountain mist.
The swelling buds, the frozen mud.
The hot fire and hustling wind.

Taking down the wall between joy and pain,
the droplet becomes the sea.
And I am but the interstice
between air and earth for a moment.

Releasing My Aching Heart

I often turn to the natural world for information about myself. Watching the light shift among the naked branches in winter, I see my own fluctuations. There is nothing good or bad in the way leaves dance in the light, or the stark outlines of branches hold their form reaching into the sky. So too is there nothing good or bad in the way my mind moves. I can watch it in much the same way.

Irises have taught me so much about judgment as I observe their stages and know that each is in its own way exactly as it needs to be and there really is no comparison of one stage to another in beauty or grace. I say iris, but could just as easily say roses. Plants and animals generally all offer this in wildly different ways. The first growth - so intense and exciting poking through the recently frozen earth - promising what might come. The courageous stand of the tender leaves through all the vagaries of early spring weather, the beginnings of that growth that promises lushness, quiet elongation of what will be buds... well, the whole formation and opening of the amazing blooms, one and then another, the browning and curling of the petals, the remarkable remains of what will be the seed pod, and then that ultimately gorgeous pod hardening and protecting and then scattering the seed.

I cherish the brown and green grass, the flying twisting maple seed, the curled darkened leaves among the drooping blooms of peonies. How can the dry and brittle winter mode of a field of brush not zing my heart?

So when my heart is aching, for others who suffer, for my own fears about those I love, for an opportunity lost or an obvious painful set of conditions, I turn to those same natural stages to help me remain open to possibilities. The pain is still there, but gathers hope and options along with it. Roots still deep, air still providing oxygen, sunlight in abundance even on a cloudy day. And then with a deep sense of comfort, I realize that my troubles, my moments, my life itself is transitory like the leaf buds and flowering glories. I feel protected and infinite in that I, myself, am simply a part of the natural cycles as are the birds, lizards, roses, willows and ocean waves.

My bones, my breath, my steps and my aching heart are as natural as the way I smile at the puffed up bird bodies holding their own in the cold.