When life gives you mushy peas

As a child I was often told that starving children in China would be happy to have the mushy peas I carefully picked out from the Campbell's vegetable soup and left in the bowl. I felt bad for the starving children and guilty, but that wasn't going to make me like the mushy peas -- or the occasional lima beans that kept them company after everything else was gone.

I thought of that this week because of a couple of unexpected events that caused some strong shifts in the family Force. Nothing awful -- a car given a terminal diagnosis, a recurring expense that the new health insurance covers far less of than the previous policy. Unexpected. Unpleasant. Inconvenient. But not tragic.

It's interesting to watch where your mind goes when the earth shifts. There's a moment when you feel it, and then the mind starts to scramble. Uneven ground is uncomfortable. So the mind seeks level ground again. It looks for someone to blame -- or absorbs the blame itself. What was done? What was not done? Who did or didn't do it? What should have been done? What should happen now? What might happen next? Can I ignore it? Pretend it didn't happen? Assure myself it isn't important -- after all, there are children starving somewhere, buildings exploding, wars being fought, and I'm upset about a car.

And while there's value in putting our suffering into perspective, I think it's important to acknowledge the shock to the system, to be disconcerted, surprised, and confused. To accept the feelings that arise before deciding they're inappropriate.

Knowing that other people have it worse, that my problems are mushy peas while others deal with massive boulders, can convince me to disallow my feelings. And I fear I'm even worse when I'm dealing with other people's feelings. I want them to feel OK, and I may jump into telling them why they're OK before letting them be not OK with what's happening.

But the feeling isn't really about the car; it's about the loss, about change, about impermanence. It's a reminder of the inevitable breakdown of everything, the truth of impermanence. And that's universal. It's a connection with all of the humans who are discovering that. Change is scary, loss hurts. Touching that in myself opens me up to touching it in others; denying it in myself, even if it's because I see it as less legitimate than others' pain, closes me off to all of it.

It's OK to hate the mushy peas, even if someone else would like them or is so hungry that they'd appreciate them even if they didn't like the taste or texture. Let those feelings remind you that everybody is faced with things they don't much like to varying degrees -- and make the aspiration that all beings have good things that bring them happiness, that all beings don't have the things that bring them unhappiness, and that all beings have the equanimity to sit with both.

And do what you can to share what you have. Donate to a food bank. Hold a friend's sadness with love before cheering them up. Don't tell a serious-faced person to smile -- just smile at them.

The World in a Cookie

This has been a week of intense cookie-baking, which equates to infinite opportunities to see the dharma in action.

As the poet Thich Nhat Hahn sees the sky in a piece of paper, the baker sees the world in a cookie -- here are the people who grew the things that went into the Earth Balance vegan butter and those who came up with the perfect blend of gluten-free flour in Pamela's Artisanal flour mix. Here is the extraordinary interdependence of science and ancient grains and my grandmother's cookie cutters, all in one extraordinary bite.

It's a story of ritual and lineage, of  causes and conditions, of interdependence and impermanence, fame and ill repute.

Cookies.

You can practice mindfulness while brushing your teeth, Thich Nhat Hahn says. You can experience the truth of the whole of the buddhadharma while baking cookies: the suffering that rises when you are attached to the idea that things will happen a certain way and that the cookies will look like the picture in the cookbook; the attachment to a self that earns praise or blame for the results; impermanence -- the whole point of all the effort that goes into making cookies is that they will disappear. The paramitas are there: Generosity, proper conduct (I choose to use vegan ingredients), patience, exertion, concentration.

Buddhism isn't about how long you sit on a cushion or how many mantras you say, it's about how you walk in the world -- or do the dishes or make cookies or answer the phone. And that, to me, is the beauty of it. Don't believe anything just because a teacher -- even the Buddha -- said it. Test it.

There are lots of books that show how cooking illuminates the dharma -- Edward Espe Brown's cookbooks (they come with commentary) or Roshi Bernie Glassman's Instructions to the Cook are some of my favorites. This is from The Chocolate Cake Sutra by Geri Larkin.

A melt-in-your-mouth chocolate cake is the perfect metaphor for where we can land if we introduce the correct ingredients into our lives. When the ingredients merge and melt together, we become spiritual warriors, able to take the slings and arrows of planet life in stride, with grace and a grin.

Accepting death doesn't mean denying grief

Accepting the inevitability of death is woven throughout the Buddha's teachings. So why are Buddhists so upset at the news that Thich Nhat Hanh may be near death?

Thay, as he is known, has taught often on death and how it is neither an end nor a beginning, just a change in appearance. Focusing on interdependence, or interbeing, he teaches that conditions have come together to create this form that we consider to be ourselves, and when that form no longer functions, what is us will become something else. He even wrote a book called "No Death, No Fear."

There are contemplations on death throughout Buddhist teachings, from meditations that ask us to imagine the decomposition of our bodies, organ by organ, to rituals performed in charnel grounds using instruments made from human bones.

Death is inevitable; it comes without warning. ... This body will be a corpse.

So why, when faced with the death, do Buddhists turn to prayers for the person's recovery?

Thich Nhat Hanh is 88 years old. He had a severe brain hemorrhage. He has been an extraordinary teacher, an example of kindness, compassion, and forgiveness, a proponent of mindfulness. Why not let him go?

I have no answers, just a couple of thoughts.

-- Thay has been an extraordinary teacher who has touched many people deeply. Those people want to continue to receive his teachings and hope that even more people may be affected by him. That would, without question, make the world a better place.

-- Accepting death doesn't mean denying grief. To those whose hearts have been touched by Thay or whose lives have been changed by his teachings, his passing will be a cause for grief. Grief hurts. But it's how we know that someone has been important to us, that their absence leaves a space that is filled for a time by sadness.

I was reminded of that this week when I got the news that a friend had died. She wasn't a close friend, someone I'd worked with years ago, but we were Facebook friends with similar interests. I was used to her vibrant smile and her enthusiasm showing up there. And it was painful to learn that this 30-something woman whose last Facebook post was about her excitement at starting to plan an annual event for a local LGBTQ center was gone.

Every morning I recite a version of the four thoughts that turn the mind to liberation. The second, impermanence, includes this:

Everyone who is born will die. My death is certain; the exact time is unknown. Knowing this, what is most important?

The answer, inevitably, is that being present with life and the people in it is most important. If every conversation could be the last time we talk, then I want to be there fully, not biding time until I can check my email, not thinking about what other people might think about how I look, not reviewing a conversation with someone else a day ago.

Plum Village, Thay's monastery, provides updates on his condition. They include suggestions for how his followers can practice to support him:

Please continue to enjoy the blue sky for Thầy, the fresh morning air and the small pathways in nature for Thầy. Especially, please enjoy each other, your loved ones, and our togetherness for Thầy.
If possible, you can dedicate a day to eat vegetarian as a way to generate compassion to send to Thầy. You can reconcile with your loved ones, or to let go of your resentment of someone and write them a love letter. And in the same Winter Retreat spirit being practiced at our monasteries, you can participate in your local Sangha more, support the collective energy of mindfulness, consume less and reduce your time online.

The key to a happy marriage? Accepting impermanence

A student in the meditation class I lead once asked how I could reconcile the truth of impermanence with being married. Since nothing is permanent, how can you take a vow to stay with someone for better or worse, all the days of your life?

My answer was that impermanence doesn't mean that nothing lasts -- it means that nothing stays the same. There is no solid, permanent, singular self, and no solid, permanent, unchanging marriage.

My spouse and I have been married for 33 years, as of Oct. 25. Neither of us is the person we were then, back in our early 20s. I can't speak for him on this, but I would not have wanted to be forever 23, even young and in love and pooling our pocket change to buy dinner on Friday nights, romantic as that was. We've changed, the world has changed, the conditions of our lives have changed.

And so it goes.

Autumn is an absolute reminder of the truth of impermanence -- here in New England, the leaves are on fire, sharp tongues of gold and red reaching into an azure sky, until they let go and drift to the ground. We rake them, grudgingly, and drag them to the compost pile to decompose, creating food for future vegetable plants.

And so it goes for us humans, like it or not. We grow, we bloom, we endure dark days, cold days, and we wait for the sun. We change with conditions. We persevere. And someday, we'll drop. All earthly relationships end some day.

So why get married? You might as well as ask, why live? Why get out of bed? The day will end too, but we usually start it, often in the morning. Life will end, and we yet we continue to live it. Everything is impermanent, and yet things come into existence.

I am not the woman I was back then, and he's not that man. Our relationship's not the bright, shiny, untested, brand-spanking-new marriage it was in 1980. It's something different. It's been myriad relationships -- spouses, parents, adult children, caregivers, cared for, empty-nesters, full-lifers -- and that's how it lasts.

Accepting impermanence is key to staying married, actually. It's only by knowing that your relationship will change, your partner will change, your life conditions will change that you can stay. All of that will happen, of course, and if you fight it, if you cling to where it is at one stage or to an ideal of how it should be, it will fail.

People ask me what the secret to a long marriage is. I don't know, but I would say it's being willing to let it be new, not keeping track of how long it's been. It's seeing the person who's in front of you now, not the one who was waiting at the altar. Being willing to let them grow. And being willing to grow yourself. It may be that you grow apart; it may not.

It's impossible to live in that space all the time, especially when you're living in a household as well as a relationship. It's easier to see the other person as a role than a human -- isn't it the husband's job to mow the lawn? Change the lightbulbs? Wasn't it your turn to buy groceries? Fold laundry? That's especially true when there are other beings involved -- parents, children, pets, bosses, neighbors, friends -- and you can't find the energy to just be. Or that's how it feels.

The marriage part, the vow, is about sticking it out through those times and coming back, finding your new breath, finding your new partner. Trusting in the form so that you can rest in the emptiness, the space of possibility and acceptance.

The wedding ring that drew my meditation student's attention? It's not a wedding ring. That ring hasn't fit on my finger for years. I wear a claddagh ring; I wish I could say I'd gotten it in Ireland, but I lost that one, and this is a replacement from a jewelry store in town. My husband lost his original wedding ring and quit wearing the replacement one years ago.

The rings aren't important. Seeing the human who is or isn't wearing one is what matters.

The impermanence of leaves

Margaret, are you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leaves, like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! as the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you wíll weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sorrow's springs are the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What héart héard of, ghóst guéssed:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.

Gerard Manley Hopkins
"Spring and Fall: To a young child" 

 

This could be the last time

Tikker is a digital watch that counts down the minutes to your predicted death, based on your answers to a personal health history questionnaire.  Each Tikker watch comes with a booklet called "About Time," which guides users in calculating their lifespan, Mashable reports.

I'm curious to know how they account for the proverbial bus that hits you after you walk out of the doctor's office with a clean bill of health. Or any other accident. Life -- and death -- simply is not that predictable.

Noah Levine talks about saying good-bye to one of his teachers after having lunch. "I'd like to say, 'See you soon,'" he says the teacher told him, "but it might be never again."

This wasn't a subtle way of saying he'd contracted a fatal disease. It was a teachable moment, a recognition of impermanence. We never know, when we say good-bye to someone, what will happen before -- or if -- we see them again. Children grow up, kittens become cats, hair gets grey. Things change.

Everything is impermanent. This ephemeral existence is not to be wasted. Everyone who is born will die. My death is certain, the exact time is unknown. Knowing this, what is most important?

What's important is not to leave things undone. Don't hold onto resentments, don't hold off on a smile or a hug.

 In recent years, there's been some point in every visit with my mother where she sighs and says, "This could be the last time ..." And I reply, "Yes, it could. I might walk out of here and get run over by a bus. You might live for another 20 or 30 years. You don't know."

Would you want to? Would you feel more or less anxious if you knew exactly how many more nights you had to get some sleep? Would it enhance or detract from your ability to sleep? Would it help you to enjoy the present or project your anxiety into the future?

Tikker's creators say their goal is to help people get more out of life by telling them how much more life they have to live.

"I think we can have a better life, and make better choices, if we are more aware of our upcoming expiration. It gives us perspective — the little stuff suddenly doesn't seem so important anymore. That's why I see Tikker as a happiness watch," Fredrik Colting, Tikker's creator, told Mashable in an email.

The Buddha told his followers that 2,500 years ago -- but he didn't say he could tell them when the end would be. My death is certain. The exact time is unknown.

Knowing that, knowing that you're not guaranteed another chance to sit down with someone, can you see how precious they are to you now and treat them as the rare and wonderful being that they are so that you never have to wish that they knew how you felt? What would you say if you knew it was your last meeting -- would you pick at the details or let the small stuff slide?

You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows, as Bob Dylan famously said, and you don't need a watch to tell you that your time will come.

The poet Mary Oliver asks:

Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

Do it now.

The impermanence of pets

Two weeks ago I was in a Google+ hangout, cat across my crossed legs, getting ready to meditate, and one of the other participants commented that it sounded like there was a tiger in the room. The cat's purring had gotten louder as her time grew shorter, so I moved her to another room.

That was, in fact, her last day; she purred -- loudly -- right up to the end as the tranquilizer the vet gave her took hold. We petted her head until her breathing stopped, and then a little more.

I always knew she would die before I was ready, knew that was part of her cat-ness. She would come into the room while I was meditating in the morning and squawk, then knead my legs before settling down. I was sometimes looking at her as I recited "Everyone who is born will die" and add,"yes, you."

I'm not, generally, scared by the prospect of my death. I am saddened by the idea that everyone who is born will die, and the cat is the least of it. As humans, we're driven by the desire to connect; we need to be seen and valued in order to develop. (A new study links childhood abuse and brain development in women.) Yet when connections become attachments, when we reify relationships or believe that our happiness depends on others, we suffer.

Suffering -- dukkha, which also gets translated as anxiety, stress, anguish, dissatisfaction -- is one of the marks of our human existence. Accepting that also shows us the sukkha, the sweet side, the joy, bliss, tender heart, boundless beauty. Knowing that everything passes makes it presence more precious.

I miss the cat, Moonshine. I keep expecting to see her in her usual spots. Our other cat seems to want me to find her. At dinnertime that cat, Peeka, stands at the top of the stairs and squeaks with a "Timmy's-in-the-well" urgency. I follow her downstairs, and she circles aimlessly while I point out that I have given her food already -- just look in the bowl. It's not the food she's looking for, I think; it's her dinner partner.

It's just like that. There will be a new cat, a snuggly one who will sit on my crossed legs, I hope. A new dinner partner. Knowing the inevitable end should not stop us from enjoying the existing moment.

Body issues

I've been working a lot with body issues recently -- not the body issues you usually hear talked about of weight and height and hair and bra size, but the ones that have to do with functioning. It could be a(nother) diagnosed condition, which brings another medication and another doctor I have to fit into my schedule. It could be the infection that I tried to treat naturopathically, only to give in and go for antibiotics.

Or it could be the new practice I'm working with, a form of chod, in which you locate demons in your body and transmute them into protectors.

Along with all the relative reality of going to doctors, taking pills, doing yoga, lifting weights, getting exercise -- and trying to determine when it's wise to take a break from that and just rest -- there's the larger reality.

Five Daily Recollections

1. I am of the nature to grow old; I cannot avoid aging.
2. I am of the nature to become ill or injured; I cannot avoid illness or injury
3. I am of the nature to die; I cannot avoid death.
4. All that is mine, dear and delightful, will change and vanish.
5. I am the owner of my actions;
   I am born of my actions;
   I am related to my actions;
   I am supported by my actions;
   Any thoughts, words or deeds I do, good or evil, those I will inherit.

from AN V.57  Upajjhatthana Sutta: Subjects for Contemplation

For a lot of people, #3 is the big one, judging by the way many Buddhist teachers talk. Death! The great fear at the bottom of all others! I'm not all that troubled by death. It will happen. I don't know when or what happens after. All I can control is what I do now, in this moment; I live my life with the aspiration to create as much ease and benefit as I can for the most people, and what happens next time around will be the inevitable result.


I don't even mind #1 that much. I'm 55. I don't dye my hair, don't wear makeup to try to hide that. I probably dress too young for my age, but it's not to appear younger. I don't like mom jeans around my waist, shirts tucked in. Maybe there's some deeper issue here, but I don't project what I think people think about how I look -- "they must think I look hot/cool/silly/old." I smile at them, and I hope they feel a moment of lightness, but I own only my actions, not their reactions.

Nah. It's #2 that makes me anxious. I am of the nature to become ill or injured; I cannot avoid illness or injury.

I understand the reality of that one. And it terrifies me. I don't want to have a knee replacement that will take me away from my routine for at least six months. I don't want my stomach to hurt. I don't want to feel drained of energy, where the thought of leaving the house is daunting.


I resist the idea that I won't just drop dead one day, that I may have to experience the limitations of body that come with age. That I already am experiencing them. I suffer about it. Sometimes.

And yet ... most days I get up and walk around and do what I want. I take a two-mile walk at lunchtime on workdays. I breath, and I don't even think about it except when it's impeded. I type. I type a lot. And sometimes my hands hurt, but they still work. Truly, my medical conditions are not all that serious in the moment, just annoying.

So I try to stay present, meditating on examining tables while waiting for doctors to come in, feeling the feels, rejoicing and mourning from moment to moment. It is the best medicine I have found.

[4] "Furthermore...just as if a sack with openings at both ends were full of various kinds of grain — wheat, rice, mung beans, kidney beans, sesame seeds, husked rice — and a man with good eyesight, pouring it out, were to reflect, 'This is wheat. This is rice. These are mung beans. These are kidney beans. These are sesame seeds. This is husked rice,' in the same way, monks, a monk reflects on this very body from the soles of the feet on up, from the crown of the head on down, surrounded by skin and full of various kinds of unclean things: 'In this body there are head hairs, body hairs, nails, teeth, skin, flesh, tendons, bones, bone marrow, kidneys, heart, liver, pleura, spleen, lungs, large intestines, small intestines, gorge, feces, bile, phlegm, pus, blood, sweat, fat, tears, skin-oil, saliva, mucus, fluid in the joints, urine.'
"In this way he remains focused internally on the body in & of itself, or focused externally... unsustained by anything in the world. This is how a monk remains focused on the body in & of itself.

(gory descriptions of rotting corpses)

"In this way he remains focused internally on the body in & of itself, or externally on the body in & of itself, or both internally & externally on the body in & of itself. Or he remains focused on the phenomenon of origination with regard to the body, on the phenomenon of passing away with regard to the body, or on the phenomenon of origination & passing away with regard to the body. Or his mindfulness that 'There is a body' is maintained to the extent of knowledge & remembrance. And he remains independent, unsustained by (not clinging to) anything in the world. This is how a monk remains focused on the body in & of itself.

Satipattana Sutta

The glass is empty

Joko Beck says we can “slowly open ourselves to the wonder of what life is by meticulous attention to the anatomy of the present moment.”

The point is not that a positive emotion is better than a negative one, but that ALL thoughts and emotions are impermanent, or in Buddhist terms, empty. They have no reality whatsoever. Our only freedom is knowing from years of observation and experiencing that all personally centered thoughts and emotions and the actions born of them are empty. … When we realize this, we can abandon them. When we do, very naturally we enter the space of wonder.