Gratitude For Life

I heard on the radio yesterday how airports and highway patrol and train stations are preparing for the extra number of people expected to be traveling this Thanksgiving weekend. They called it the Superbowl of Travel Days. I was touched by the idea that everyone seems to want to go home and spend time with kin. I was sad to hear, right after the election two weeks ago, that some families are cancelling their Thanksgiving gathering because individual family members are not willing to sit down with people who voted differently from the way that they had. I hope most of them have relaxed enough to remember the many other dimensions of relationships that have endured over years. Even the awkward moments, “Remember Uncle Charlie’s bad jokes” and, “Margaret brought that same terrible pie year after year,” that endure even after people die, are part of the legacy conversation of family meals. My children, all adults now, already tease about “Remember what Mom and Dad used to say…” at family dinners. Stories and reminiscences are the glue that connects us to a group of people who fill out our identity. Everyone who has been part of our life is part of who we are now.

I am looking forward to sitting down with nineteen people this afternoon and I feel grateful that they are all still there and I am still there. For incalculable reasons, it might have been otherwise, but it isn’t.

May everyone, everywhere, have enough to eat today.

May everyone have people who remember them and care for them.

May all of us who have enough keep those who do not have enough in our hearts and minds. May we be inspired to serve this world. May this be a world of justice and peace.

Move Confidently Into The Future

On the evening of November 8 I was scheduled to give a talk about the perennially timely wisdom of the Buddha to guests at a large health and fitness resort and as the audience was assembling for the 8PM start time, someone told me the election results that had just been confirmed. I was personally shocked as I had very much believed and hoped that Ms. Clinton would be elected. I also was very troubled by what I thought a Trump presidency would mean for this country’s future. I also knew that not everyone in the audience shared my opinion and that my role was to be a representative of the Dharma, not a partisan speaker.

 I did not have time to plan, so I began by telling the truth about how that moment was for me. I am not sure of my exact words, but they were something like:

I know from seeing everyone here on their cell phones and talking to each other that you all have heard the result of the election. We are a large group, and it is most likely that we represent diverse political opinions and that each of us voted in the way we thought was best for our country as well as for our individual families. Some of us are happy and relieved and the rest of us are unhappy and concerned. I think it is likely that our opinions, one way or the other, are strong opinions since this has been a remarkably contentious election season. More than ever, I understand why terms like “battleground states” and “war chest” are used in strategy discussions as if the United States is having a war rather than an election. And, how we come to think of people who vote differently from the way we do as our enemies. Each of us, no matter who we supported, has had more than a year of hearing other people vilify the person we chose. Even now, I won’t ask you to identify you choice of candidate to the people around you. You’ve been here half a week hiking together, sharing communal dining tables, taking fitness classes together, stretching and balancing your bodies on adjacent yoga mats and you’ve exchanged cordial greetings, or at least friendly smiles. We are the same good people who hiked and ate and chatted congenially with each other all this time. We all are interested in nutrition and health and fitness. All of us love our families. All of us hope our families will flourish in a peaceful world. We chose the candidate we voted for because we believed it would be the best choice. If we were all in relaxed mind states, we could talk to each other about the reasons we had for voting the way we did. Now would not be a good time to have that talk. The negative rhetoric of these last months and weeks have traumatized us all. Those of us who feel disappointed are likely frightened by what we imagine will happen next. For myself, I hope to use these next days to let my nerves calm down and my mind settle, to talk to my friends, to have the remind me that equanimity is the ability to say, “This is what is happening now. Let’s see what happens next.”

The Buddha would have said something like that, if not those exact words. His last words in his life we, “Move confidently into the future.”

I have been very sad since the election. The good things that I had imagined would happen with a Clinton presidency won’t happen. As I spoke with one of my friends this morning, I realized that although my sadness persists, I haven’t been angry and for that I am grateful. That would be extra, and it would make things worse. 

Let's See What Happens Next

I saw the big orange sun rise this morning over the Berkeley hills and thought “That same sun, in that same place, will rise again this Wednesday morning, November 9th.” Then I remembered that my good friend and colleague Gil Fronsdal defines equanimity this way: Equanimity is the ability to say, “This is what’s happening now. Let’s see what happens next.”  Whatever anxiety I have about tomorrow’s election is mitigated by that thought. After all, I only know what’s happening right now. And, there is always a “next.” I do care passionately about this election and I do have a very strong preference. I’ve already voted so there’s nothing more I can do except keep my own piece of mind and remain calm for those around me. Let’s all see what happens next. 

Happy Labor Day & Right Livelihood

Labor Day, the first Monday in September, is a creation of the labor movement and is dedicated to the social and economic achievements of American workers. It constitutes a yearly national tribute to the contributions workers have made to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of our country.  –U.S. Department of Labor

I am working on Labor Day this year. I am happy to be sharing my day with others, practicing mindfulness meditation.

Many people have the day off from their regular work schedule.

Others may have to work even though they would enjoy having the day off.

I feel gratitude that I am able and eager to work. I also feel gratitude for the baristas who get up early on this national holiday to make my latte so I can feel awake at work. I feel gratitude for the sanitation workers who pick up the garbage on holidays. And I feel gratitude for the police officers, firefighters, doctors, nurses, hospital staff, members of our military, and many others who work on this and every holiday to keep us safe and render assistance if needed.

The Buddha talked about Right Livelihood, one of the parts of the Eight Fold Path. There are a number of definitions for what it means to engage in Right Livelihood with the common denominator being attaining prosperity through ethical work. How is my work affecting others? Me? The Environment?

I am hopeful that your Labor Day is filled with all good things and that you will take a few moments to think about those who are working, those who are enjoying a day off, and the meaning of Right Livelihood to you.

Here’s the full text of the History of Labor Day form the U.S. Department of Labor. Here’s a thoughtful article from Lewis Richmond about Right Livelihood.

I Am 80 Years Old

Jerry Emmett, the 102-year-old honorary chairwoman of the Arizona Democratic delegation who cast her state’s votes for Hilary Clinton at the Democratic National Convention, was born before women had the right to vote in this country. She wept as she did it. By the time I was born on July 24, 1936, women had voting rights. My mother wore big, dangling, FDR earrings in 1944. I remember that my father cried when the news came the following April that President Roosevelt had died.  I remember that my mother cried when she opened the newspaper and saw the photo of the mushroom cloud over Hiroshima the following August. I remember exactly where we both were sitting when she explained to me what had happened.

Not very many people remember Dick Tracy these days. He was a cartoon strip police detective in the 1940s. He wore a wristwatch that had a walkie-talkie built into it and he could speak to colleagues who were around a corner, out of sight. That was a big deal. I often think of Dick Tracy when I am standing far from any electrical source or telephone wires and phoning my friend Monique in France or when I text my grandchildren wherever they are in the world. I think of myself as a hip grandmother because they often text me back with photos attached and I can open them. I delight in thinking that the whole world is my reference library and Google is my librarian. I am amazed not only with how much has changed, but how fast it seems to have happened.

My fourth child was born when my oldest child was five and a half years old. I remember that Seymour and I bought a washing machine, second hand, from a neighbor who was moving and that we seemed, perpetually, to be washing diapers. I was an only child and my experience with child care had been limited to being a camp counselor in summertime, but somehow it worked out with all those newborns and toddlers. I think it must have been an all-consuming task but I remember loving doing it. I painted a rafter across my kitchen ceiling with the phrase that means, “This, too, shall pass,” in Hebrew inscribed across it. I think I felt proud about doing that, as if I was saying, “How amazing that I am managing this scene and being witty about it.”

The thing is, it did pass. Pretty quickly. All of a sudden, it feels, I got to be middle-aged and now old, my boy babies have grey beards, my grandchildren all are driving cars and often drive me to appointments. I am eighty years old, officially, having passed my birthday a week ago, although I have been saying, “I am eighty,” since we turned into 2016. I am proud to say it, not because becoming old required a particular talent (I consider it the result of good genes and good luck), but because I am happy to tell my age and grateful to all the feminists before me, including my mother with her dangling earrings and progressive politics, for making that easy for me.

When I was a very young mother, my mother-in-law would often say, in a tone that sounded to me wistful and sad, “One turn around in your shoes and it’s all over.” Probably that was her way of being both bewildered by life’s inexorable changes and witty about it. I used to think, “Oh, that’s just something old people say,” but now, because I am an old person, I get it. I have a lifetime of memories, some of them very happy, some very sad, and all of them gone like vanished frames of a movie. I once mentioned to my Buddhist teacher, Joseph Goldstein, that the disappearing nature of all phenomena felt so sad to me. “Look,” I said, to him. “All these past-their-prime roses outside this window are dying and they were beautiful two days ago. It’s so sad!” He replied, “Sad is a just a story you are telling yourself. It’s just what is true.”

I know it is a story, and opinion, an elaboration of a plain cosmic truth. “Transient are all created things,” is what the Buddha would have said. But, to me, that truth is now plain. It elicits poignancy in my mind and heart, and it makes life precious to me.

Retreat Practice in the Middle of Your World

A friend of mine is part of intensive yoga training this summer. She arrives at the studio at 5:30 every morning and practices—asanas and chanting—until 8:00 am when she leaves to start her workday. At Spirit Rock Meditation Center this summer I will be co-teaching, with my colleagues Larry Yang and Konda Mason, a three-day Labor Day Weekend retreat at which people will arrive at 9:30 in the morning, practice mindfulness intensively until 5:30 in the evening, and then leave to resume the rest of their lives until they return the next morning. They are not “getting away from their life” as much as they are “practicing in the middle of their lives.”

When I began practicing mindfulness nearly forty years ago, we only thought of mindfulness as being an away-from-home, cloistered practice. It required making arrangements to be gone, packing a suitcase, traveling, entering into silence and practicing exercises designed to calm the mind and focus the attention throughout the day. Activities were limited to sitting and walking meditation, eating meditation, and performing simple chores. All of the retreat time was contemplative. It was lovely. I loved it then and I love it now.

And, I am thrilled to be part of this new adventure of bringing elements of intensive practice right into the middle of one’s life. Here are some of the immediate benefits we hope will accrue:

1.     People will be able to notice differences in how they are in their interactions with others as soon as the evening of the first day.

2.     The calm that people cultivate in the day should modulate the impact of the outside world of messages and news.

3.     People will be practicing going in and out of retreat mode and will likely be more able, after the retreat, to realize that what we think of as “practicing,” receiving each moment with poise and good will, is, in fact, not apart from daily life in the world.

4.     No packing, no getting your pets looked after, tucking your children into bed, no leaving your partner. It should feel like regular life with a retreat tucked into the middle of it.

It will be different from a residential retreat, perhaps in the way that a week of camping in the Sierras for a week is different from a walk in the park around the corner every day of a week. Both are lovely things to do. Leaving a Sierra campground probably elicits sadness in leaving it behind. The park around the corner is, after all, always around the corner.

I hope you’ll join Larry and Konda and me for this inaugural event. We’ll be glad to share the beautiful new Community Hall with you.

Let’s Skip Being Frightened and Angry, and Go Directly to Saddened

A terrible event happened in Nice, France, last night in which more than eighty people were killed and many others wounded. The images on TV are shocking. The mind flinches even looking at them. Sadly, this seems to be the kind of news that keeps people tuned to TV stations which, in turn, replay the scenes over and over. With no evidence that this new terrible event was inspired by terrorists rather than the being the work of an unhappy, mentally ill man, a parade of counter-terrorist experts are commenting on it. I keep wondering what it will take for people to turn off the TV, or for the TV reporters to suggest caution and thoughtfulness before rushing ahead with alarming provocations.

What if a TV news anchor said, as someone did soon after the 9/11 attack, “Pray for the people that died. Pray for the people they left behind. Pray that your heart stays open.” What if people all went out of doors, summoned their neighbors to join them in the street, and comforted one another. What if, instead of naming “villains” or “villainous groups”, instead of rushing to conclusions, “It’s the fault of religions,” “It’s the fault of guns,” “It’s the fault of income inequality, or racism, or anything else that is a stressor in our culture,” we invited everyone to stop, to consider, to try to rebuild a world where the level of comforting modulated the level of pain.

Imagine John Lennon’s Imagine,

Imagine there's no heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today... Aha-ah...

Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion, too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace... You...

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one

Never is Not a Useful Word

“You are never happier than your least happy child,” was the answer I gave to a list of questions that became a one page “Profile” in a national magazine. Letters to the magazine in response included one in which a dismayed mother wrote that her two adult daughters struggled with various difficult conditions and wondered if I was implying that she couldn’t be happy since she “loved her daughters more than anything in the world.”

I replied saying that the Buddha taught that the love of parents is the prototype of deeply committed loving. He describes the strength of the mother-child bond this way: “Just as a mother would give her life for her one and only child,” he taught in the Sermon on Kindness, “so should we love all beings.”

The problem with the motto I chose, “You are never happier than your least happy child,” is with the word “never.”  In the middle of knowing that one of my children, or grandchildren, is having a difficult time, an awareness that saddens me when I think of it, I might have a phone call from a friend and feel gladdened by it, or see a hawk land on my garden fence and watch it just sit there, or decide to listen to a new recording of Joshua Bell playing the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto. In all the times I am not thinking of the situation of distress, times I can cultivate by deciding to put my attention elsewhere or times that arrive by grace, like phone calls from friends, my mind gets a chance to rest. I find that the thought, “My beloved person is in pain,” seems less all-consuming. It remains a true thought, but in a larger field in which it is not the only truth. It feels easier to accept.

One of the ways I choose to rest my mind is to meditate. Even a short period of time of sitting quietly, in a comfortable space, feeling the rhythm of changes in the body as breath comes in and out of it. Paying attention to the way the shoulders rise and fall, or the belly pushes forward and then settles back down is both simple and soothing.  

When my mind is relaxed, I am able to think of the person in pain with compassion and to think of myself with compassion, too. Compassion is another form of happiness.

Pride Parade

My friend and colleague Larry Yang was a Grand Marshall in the San Francisco Pride Parade yesterday and I along with many members of the Spirit Rock Center community and the East Bay Meditation Center walked around and behind the convertible carrying Larry and his husband Stephan. There was a minute of silence called in the middle of the parade in honor and memory of the people killed and injured in Orlando on June 12th, but mainly the mood was joyous and celebratory.

My personal favorite moment was seeing a smiling middle-aged couple, a man and a woman, standing at the front of the crowd lining the parade route, each displaying a large sign. One sign said, “I am a white, Republican, mid-western proud father of a gay man.” The other sign said, “This white, mid-western mother is proud to support her gay son.” I smiled back at them and waved as I passed and hoped they understood that I appreciated what a significant lesson they were providing to the people at the parade as well as those watching on TV. I’m sure they did. I’m sure that’s why they were doing it.

I also noticed that although it was reported that there would be a seriously amplified police presence at the parade, my feeling of being safe throughout had nothing to do with police presence. In fact, apart from overseeing traffic flow at various intersections, I didn’t see a big police presence. I did hear about a contingent of gay members of the San Francisco police force in full uniform marching in the parade. I think the happy mood I felt throughout, and the enduring feeling of being safe, came from being part of the ethos of inclusivity that surrounded me.

Happy Mother's Day

 Just as a mother would give her life

To support her one and only child,

Just so, should we boundlessly open our hearts

To support all living beings.

The Buddha, In his Teaching on Impartial Kindness (The Metta Sutta)

A woman returned to the Wednesday Morning Class at Spirit Rock Meditation Center carrying her sleeping child after a several months’ hiatus. She had attended class regularly during her pregnancy and the group greeted her with enthusiastic congratulations and, as is our habit, we had a formal announcement of the child’s name and everyone offered blessings. The mother said, “I am thrilled with this baby and I was certainly prepared for her birth.  Everyone has been excited for me and with me. No one told me, though, that by having a baby I would be mortgaging my heart for the rest of my life.” There followed a hearty confirmation from the group: “That’s exactly right!” “You said it!” “It never finishes!” “I thought when my babies were no longer infants it would be forever easy, but seriously, it gets worse!”

I don’t think it gets worse. I think it gets different. My children are all in the fifties. My grandchildren are almost all adults and the possibility exists that I might sometime get to be a great-grandparent. My kin are all dear to me, not anyone less than others because of numbers. I think of my kin reflexively when I see photos of parents and children in situations both celebratory and dire because I intuit, through my own experience with kin, how I might feel in similar circumstances.  I have one heart but I think, as the Buddha taught, that a heart can hold as many beings dear as it can think of.

When I teach The Metta Sutta and come to the lines about a mother cherishing her child I often stop and say, “Just as a parent…” Whoever has committed to caring has “mortgaged their heart.” I think, though, that committing to caring is the most gratifying and satisfying thing a human being can do.

An old Nat King Cole song says, “The greatest thing you’ll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return.”  Loving is always the surest heart consolation, whatever the circumstances, but having it returned is a great blessing and having a special day for saying, “Thank you for caring” is a lovely tradition. 

The World Is Waiting To Be Welcomed In

Tomorrow, on the full moon, Jews all over the world will sit down around dinner tables and celebrate the pre-dinner ritual of retelling the story of the long-ago journey of the Israelites from bondage to liberation starting with the words, “We were slaves unto Pharaoh in Egypt…” Whether they hold that story to be literally true or not, that exodus is the core story of the Torah and Jews continue to reinterpret and contemporize that message. The ritual reading of the story varies in different communities but, in my experience, it always includes saying, “Tell this story as if it happened to you.” In my family, as in others, the pleasure of being with family and friends doing a familiar ritual is comforting and gratifying. The injunction, “…as if it is happening to you,” is what makes it exciting and inspiring. “How am I not free?” “Even if I am physically safe, what limitations, or beliefs of limitations, hold me hostage?” “How can I move forward into more freedom in my life?” “What am I doing to help others move towards freedom?”

When my children and then my grandchildren were young, we told the story as history: “These are the people we came from and we are proud of them.” My own children were young in the nineteen-sixties so the Civil Rights Movement was part of our discussion as well, and we sang, “We Shall Overcome” and “Let My People Go,” as part of our Seder ritual. As my grandchildren grew up, they dramatized the story, playing the parts of groups of people seeking freedom trudging through our living room. I have a photo of my grandson Collin, now an adult, crouching behind a potted plant speaking as the invisible voice of God. Now, as adults, we talk about refugees all over the world, all seeking freedom, seeking the liberation of not having to worry about their own safety and the safety of their children, of being able to put down roots in a place that welcomes them. We talk about what we, personally, can do to make the world a safer and more welcoming place, a place where everyone can feel at home.

Tasting bitter herbs as a recollection of tears shed in the world’s collective memory and in our personal memories, eating sweet mixtures of fruit and nuts (the recipes for which vary depending on regional ancestry), and opening the door to the outside as a symbolic way of welcoming the stranger (the Prophet Elijah in traditional circles or any stranger as many families now do), are all part of the ritual. We eat dinner together and then end the evening by saying together, “Next year, may all people be free.”

Admiring, not Judging or Comparing

“The burdensome practice of judging brings annoyance and weariness. What benefit can be derived from distinctions and separations?” is a line from the Faith Verses of the 3rd Zen Patriarch. I love that line, and it supports me especially when I think about friends of mine who teach Dharma who are either in difficult circumstances themselves or teach in difficult places. 

My friend Toni Bernhard teaches about living mindfully with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. She has been sick for twelve years and teaches through her books and in her blog in Psychology Today. Her husband Tony Bernhard teaches in a Maximum Security prison where his students are so violent they each sit in locked cages (as does Tony) in a room large enough to hold all the cages. You can read an account of Tony’s circumstance here.

I admire my friend Alex Berzin who, for many years, flew to remote areas of the former Soviet Union to teach people who otherwise would have had no access to the teachings. I remember his accounts of sleeping on the floors of airline terminals between flights and on rickety airplanes that did not have seat belts.

I admire them all, and sometimes I think, “Wow! They are so noble. I teach at Spirit Rock Meditation Center which is absolutely idyllic. These folks are the real heroes.”

That’s when I think about the line in the Faith Verses. Then I remember, “Everyone is being themselves, doing what they are as the best expression of Toni or Tony or Alex or Sylvia.” Everyone is exactly the most heroic expression of who they could be.

I used to have a poster on my wall that read: “Be yourself. Everyone else is already taken.”

On Watching TV

Today is the fifth day of my vow to not watch the news on cable TV. The images of destruction over the past few weeks are painful to see and the sound of the voices of the journalists is one of sustained outrage, regardless of what part of the political spectrum they represent. I find that listening to that tone, sounding to me as if each sentence starts with the words, “Can you believe?…” even though it doesn’t use those exact words, jangles my nerves. One of the remarks of the Buddha that comes to mind is, “Whatever the mind ponders, whatever it dwells on, by that is it shaped.” I found myself becoming irritable. I realized that I was thinking belligerent, intolerant thoughts. That’s when I made the vow to stop watching. It should have been entirely easy. I don’t need the TV to stay up with world news. I read the same daily New York newspaper that I’ve read all of my adult life and trust to be more or less balanced in their perspective and thorough in their reporting.

I discovered, halfway through Day One, that the impulse to “just turn on the TV to see what’s happening” started to arise at predictable times. I’d be folding the laundry, sitting down to sew on a button, or about to take time to finish knitting the sweater I’m working on. As I paid attention to the impulse, I realized that it was driven by more than just a desire to enhance a moment of rote activity. I discovered that although my mind was already noticeably less jangled, I was missing the jangle. I recalled saying to a friend just recently, “Watching news on TV is like watching a Super Bowl, or a World Series. You get excited wanting one side or the other to win.” I could see that I had been beguiled by the excitement and addicted to the buzz.

 I’ve discovered that the National Geographic Channel is, for me, an amazing and inspiring accompaniment to laundry folding. Nat Geo alternates extraordinary videos of natural wonders with episodes of Cesar Millan, the Dog Whisperer, calming down overwrought dogs, dogs that are out of their owner’s control, by taking charge of situations with kind resolve. Mr. Millan begins most training by walking resolutely forward with a dog held close by him on a leash, all the while talking softly: “Let’s just keep walking together, steady and calm, you are doing great, and everything is going to be okay.” 

Festivals of Spring

It’s Easter and unusually, because it is a leap year in the Hebrew calendar which adds an extra month to get the full moon cycles in sync with their lunar holidays, Passover is still a month away. When they are closer together it is easier to imagine that The Last Supper was a Passover ritual meal and easier to understand both festivals as celebrations of the flourishing of renewal of the spirit as well as the renewal of the earth. I think of getting out of Egypt as escaping the narrow constrictions of the mind that inhibit the expression of compassion and the resurrection as symbolizing the undying potential of love. In the northern hemisphere these are spring festivals and new plants and eggs are part of both Easter and Passover rituals. (I’ve often wondered how it feels to celebrate Succoth, the harvest festival, in Sydney when the days are getting lighter and warmer in September and October.)

What I’ve decided is that, apart from planting and harvesting as the earthly context that either matches or does not match the season, the inner context of days we designate as holy never varies. They are days of paying attention and remembering that everyone and everything is interconnected. Of remembering that impartial, unshakeable love is the universal antidote to enmity, the constructor of barriers in the mind that creates the sense of separation and suffering. The days leading up to major holidays (Easter and Passover and everything else) are days of preparation: The Holiday is coming! Clean the cupboards! Take inventory so nothing is overlooked. I think of Moral Inventory as including what is in my closets that I need to give away and what is in my mind (old grudges and expired belief systems) that I could release, anything that keeps me self-preoccupied rather than interested in and connecting with the world around me.

The Dalai Lama, commenting on the Buddha’s description of the Divine Abodes of the Mind, describes how unbounded love and compassion for all beings is the end of suffering and the source of happiness. He commented on the ability to rejoice in the good fortune of others as being especially potent. “Imagine,” he said, “celebrating other peoples’ good fortune. The odds are very good. You could be eight billion times as happy as you are.”

Celebrating the potential of the human mind and heart to be free to love seems to me the essence of it all. Happy Easter. Happy Passover on April 22. Happy The Buddha’s Birthday on April 8 in Japan or on May 14 in Sri Lanka. Happy Mother’s Day.

Or, how about ANY day being a good day to remember that we are free to love whenever we remember to be awake in the world that we are part of, not separate from. How about Happy ANY Day to celebrate life. Today is always the first day of the rest of your life.  

The World Is Not Less Safe Today Than It Was Yesterday

The terrorist attacks in Brussels this morning were indeed terrifying. Sights and sounds of people wounded and buildings shattered are horrifying and since we see them collectively and repeatedly as TV networks rerun details as they unfold and analyses of how and why they happened they seem to fill the communal consciousness. People great each other saying, “Did you hear about it?”

It feels to me as if it as is certainly appropriate to feel saddened. Families waiting for a normal day to unfold have been bereaved of a loved one. Families rushing to bedsides of wounded relatives are traumatized. People near the attacks who were not wounded are likely in shock. All of us around the world watching the coverage on TV are surely shaken both by the pain of seeing other people in pain perhaps also by the thought, “That could happen anywhere. It could happen to me.” It could, but it is not likely. We can certainly feel compassion but we do not need to feel frightened. For the most part, people travel all over the world every day in monumental numbers and do it safely. And people survive accidents and illnesses. Our bodies are vulnerable even without doing an activity that might be considered dangerous. The only part of us that can be invulnerable is our capacity for benevolence.

What seems most important to me is to hold today’s events with as much compassion as possible. I feel compassion for the people directly impacted by the attacks, but also for everyone (including me) who feels saddened. I also feel sad for the mothers and fathers of suicide bombers everywhere who will not see their child again.

I don’t know how to finish the sentences, “Life is…” or, “People are…” Life happens, all the time, and events have consequences whether they are volitional or natural. Earthquakes and tsunamis often have catastrophic outcomes leaving bereaved survivors. Shootings in school yards or post offices or movie theaters also leave bereaved survivors. Life is everything. People are complicated, and sometimes capable of planning and doing terrible things. Others, most of us I believe, are moved to console and to care.

Cultivating Wisdom

It’s spring in California. The Magnolia tree down the street has buds on it. The crocuses and tulips have pushed up through the ground. Seed packets and gardening tools are now on the shelves in the supermarket and I notice how my heart picks up when I see the display. I stop and read a few of the tomato seed packets, amazed by the diversity of colors and shapes. The pumpkin seeds continue to intrigue me in spite of the fact that even when my back was strong enough to garden I never had success with pumpkins. I remember planting every spring. I remember having a cook-book titled, “Too Much Zucchini” and baking zucchini bread. Often, as I roll my cart past the display, I think about the man who, forty years ago, taught me the lesson I now need to remember.

The man was a new student at the “Yoga For Older Adults” class I taught at the local junior college. He was older than most participants, and was walking with the aid of forearm crutches. When I greeted him he said, “My friend told me this was a good class so I thought I’d try it out.” When the class was over, I checked with him as he was getting ready to leave.  He said “You’re a very good teacher. I enjoyed the class but it’s too hard for me so I won’t come back. Thank you, though.”

I watched him walk on his crutches to the door. He turned around, looked at me and smiled. Then he said, “I just wanted to tell you that I was a member of the 1920 U.S. Olympic rowing team. “

At that moment, I thought, “This is going to be an important lesson.” These days, when I find myself wistful about seed displays, I remember that aging athlete of long ago and I say to myself, “I used to have a really good garden.” I love it that my mind knows where to look to find what it needs to balance itself when it feels wobbly.

Remembrance As A Blessing

My good friend Donald’s mother died three days ago and although Bernice was ninety-two years old, her sudden death was unexpected and Donald feels both shocked and saddened. All of us who knew Bernice and were touched by her gracious elder-hood were also saddened by the news. When I heard from Donald about her passing, I said the response phrase I learned from my family when I was young: May your memory of her continue to be a blessing to you.

And, I just this morning read the article by my friend Jay Michaelson in The Forward, a newspaper I get on line, that today is the 20th anniversary of the death of two young friends of his in a bus bombing in Jerusalem. Matt and Sarah were students, studying and working for peace. Jay describes reading a newly published anthology of their essays, “Love Finer Than Wine,” and said he found their kindness and intelligence was “almost too much to bear.”

He describes the tremendous rage and despair he felt for some time after Matt and Sarah’s death and how, ultimately, he realized that the rage “clouded my better judgment and made me the kind of person I was supposed to be against.” And, he adds, that although the hurt remains, “I refused to dishonor the memory of my friends by becoming as lesser person.”

My friend Eve’s message, also in this morning’s email, is a reflection on all the losses of people dear to her in life: her maternal grandparents, her father who died when she was a young woman, her mother, and the recent death of her beloved husband. Her reminiscence sounds both appreciative and sad. She says, “With so many loved ones gone, I feel like the wind could whistle through the holes in my heart and make its own plaintive music.”

Perhaps appreciative sadness is the blessing that nurtures our own kindness as a response.

Supreme Friendship

I read this wonderfully poignant statement from Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg following the sudden death of her long-time colleague and friend Justice Antonin Scalia:

"Toward the end of the opera Scalia/Ginsburg, tenor Scalia and soprano Ginsburg sing a duet: “We are different, we are one,” different in our interpretation of written texts, one in our reverence for the Constitution and the institution we serve. From our years together at the D.C. Circuit, we were best buddies. We disagreed now and then, but when I wrote for the Court and received a Scalia dissent, the opinion ultimately released was notably better than my initial circulation. Justice Scalia nailed all the weak spots—the 'applesauce' and 'argle bargle'—and gave me just what I needed to strengthen the majority opinion. He was a jurist of captivating brilliance and wit, with a rare talent to make even the most sober judge laugh. The press referred to his 'energetic fervor,' 'astringent intellect,' 'peppery prose,' 'acumen,' and 'affability,' all apt descriptions. He was eminently quotable, his pungent opinions so clearly stated that his words never slipped from the reader’s grasp.

"Justice Scalia once described as the peak of his days on the bench an evening at the Opera Ball when he joined two Washington National Opera tenors at the piano for a medley of songs. He called it the famous Three Tenors performance. He was, indeed, a magnificent performer. It was my great good fortune to have known him as working colleague and treasured friend."

I immediately wanted to share Justice Ginsburg’s wisdom that just because someone has a different opinion from us doesn’t mean they are not a good person, or don’t have worthwhile thoughts, or that they can’t be our friend. Finding common ground with someone who thinks differently from us can open new pathways to engagement and learning and offers the possibility of expanding our views.

Invisible Signposts in the Mind

One of my granddaughters momentarily gagged on a sticky piece of Mozzarella on her pizza when she was eight years old and even now as a young adult does not eat cheese of any kind. I have also heard people say, “When I was in the second grade the music teacher said I should just mouth the words of the songs we sang because I could not carry a tune and even now I do not join a sing-along.”  I recently overheard a luncheon table-mate at a conference I attended explaining her passing up all the vegetables: “When I was a child, my mother forced me to eat vegetables.” The person who had noticed replied, “That was a long time ago.” The fact that emotionally charged situations leave powerful signs in the mind, “Never eat cheese!”, “Do not sing out loud!”, “Defend your right to refuse vegetables!” whether or not the situations were actually life threatening (like chocking) or now relevant (like singing in key) seem beside the point. They endure in our instinctive memory as protections against feeling threatened. Our nervous systems, for complex reasons that certainly include genetics as well as life experiences, mark certain situations as dangerous and we respond as automatically as the foot goes onto the brake when the light turns red up ahead.

I’ve also recognized other patterns in my mind that the Buddha would have named as the affliction of Nervous Worrying and Fretting. I imagine signs in my mind that say,“When in doubt, worry. This might be a catastrophe.” I am glad to have the opportunity to teach about my experience because it reassures people that whatever afflictive habit they struggle with—lusting, raging, doubting, or surrendering too easily to despair—is workable. Recognizing an afflictive mind habit as just a habit—an annoying and painful one, certainly—but fundamentally just a habit is what makes it workable. I tell people that I am a Recovering Fretter. I am still easily startled: “Why doesn’t she call me back?”, “Why is he so late?”, “What if [anything] happens?” Alarmed responses still arise in my mind in situations of ambiguity. What is different now is that I recognize the signs of alarm. I can say, “There goes my fretting response again, just ready to take over my mind. I do not have to do that. I can wait and see what happens next.” The more I practice that, the better I get at it.

It often happens when I teach about afflictive habits of the mind that someone suggests, “Of course you have fretful genes. You have Jewish genes, inherited from generations of people whose lives were imperiled because of their identity.” I don’t know. My parents were not nervous people. And, when I poll any large group of people I’m teaching about their most afflictive mind habit, about half raise their hands and they aren’t Jews. It’s mysterious.

In situations of terrible trauma, like battlefields, some people come away with long-enduring signs in their minds, “Fall to the ground when you hear a loud noise!” That life-saving injunction in battle becomes a painful life-limiting reminder in peace circumstances that often requires trauma psychotherapy and loving communal support as well as compassionate mindful awareness. The awareness, “This is a habit and so it can change,” is a crucial step in recovery.

Sometimes the source of a sign in the mind is obvious. Knowing it is there is important. Compassionate mindful awareness begins the de-activation of limiting signs in the mind, regardless of their origin. Erasing signs entirely might not be possible. I am hoping to accustom my mind to noticing when a painful response is about to fill my mind so that I can say to myself, “Relax! No need to feel frightened [greedy, angry, exhausted, or insecure]. You can choose otherwise. Take a breath. Now is now.”

Tidying as a Spiritual Practice

When I learned that “Tidying” is currently the subject of several best-selling books I remembered with pleasure that in the book The Vision of Dhamma by Nyanaponika Thera, one of the definitions that the Venerable Mahathera offers for Mindfulness is that it functions as a tidier of the mind. At the time, I thought of the word “tidy” as being quaint and probably reminiscent of the meticulous housekeeping of his German Jewish mother. I recall teaching about it and extending that furniture metaphor to saying that if I tidied my mind I would know what was in it and where it all was so I would not trip on anything and cause pain.

What I am thinking about now is that tidying, more than knowing what and where everything is, includes knowing what I no longer need to hold on to and what I am better off not having. And, it includes taking steps to disencumber.

De-cluttering closets and minds are both spiritual practices, interrelated of course, but one visible and one invisible.

My daughter Elizabeth, when I discussed my idea with her, said I should use the rubric WWTBGA, What Would The Buddha Give Away. Traditionally, Buddhist monks and nuns have only the bare necessities of clothing which they keep with them and rely on others for supplying food and medicine and other basic care items. I know that what Elizabeth means is using discriminating awareness to discern wise life choices. My friend MaryKay Sweeney who runs the homeless services of the county we live in once gave me a magnet reminder for my refrigerator door: “The sweater in your closet that you have not worn in a year is not yours. It belongs to a homeless person waiting for you to return it to them.” I think about how many pairs of socks I actually need given that I do laundry once a week. How many anything do I actually need? Do I need to keep the sweatshirt with the cute logo on it just because my adolescent child gave it to me as a Valentine gift 30 years ago? Do I really need the contents of numerous plastic bags of half-knitted sweaters that I might someday finish or aren’t they better off as a gift, with extra yarn and needles, to the senior residence nearby that has a knitting group? And the tiny plastic bag of mini-cassettes with scratchy barely audible conversations I had with my 98 year old grandfather 35 years ago? I do not have a player for them. I hear his voice in my mind. Who else, other than me, needs or wants to hear them? I once had a reel-to-reel tape of a conversation that my mother and my husband’s aunt Celia had 59 years ago when my son, Michael, was born and every time I go through certain old boxes I have the hope I’ll find it again. I surely won’t. It positively does not matter. I remember what they said and I hear them in my mind and I am always happy when I think of them. I do not need the tape.

The Buddha’s central teaching is that imperative in the mind, the sense of needing something to be different from how it is, is suffering.

(Check my blog in three days. There is a lot more to say about un-cluttering. Next we’ll move from the closet to the mind where finding clutter and addressing it becomes more complex.)