02/25 2013 Posted In Friends & Community, Love & Compassion, Mindful, Non-attachment/Letting go, Thoughts From Annie

Hippie Jesus and Attached Non-attachment

Dear Friends,

When I was 9 years old, my cousin Tom and I saw the face of Jesus in my bedroom window.  His father, my uncle, was a Presbyterian minister, and we were both thrilled that such a cool and kind guy would come to see us.  We had first learned about Jesus in Bible stories at Sunday school, and had more recently heard him singing on the album Jesus Christ Superstar.  We knew this Jesus so well that we could sing every song from the album.  And we did.

I wasn’t an extremely religious child.  But in retrospect, I was drawn to Jesus Christ Superstar for more than simply the great music.  On this album, the very hippie Jesus sang about living a human life fully in the present moment.  When the apostles got anxious about the future he told them: “Don’t you mind about the future, don’t you try to think ahead.  Save tomorrow for tomorrow, think about today instead.”  He even suggested that his female companion, Mary Magdalene, was the one person who was truly helping, because with her gentle touch “she alone has tried to give me what I need right here and now.”  He was real and present.

In my extended angst-filled teenage years, I would sometimes wake up from what felt like a shameful night of excess and find my way into a nearby church, looking, with minimal success, for that real live Jesus.  Many years later I went to Divinity School in an attempt to find that Jesus.  While there, I listened jealously to my classmates’ stories about how Jesus pulled them out of their painful addiction or how he literally rode in the front seat of their car everywhere they went.

I have infrequently told others about my secret longing for a Jesus of my own, and whenever I have, I have been surprised to discover that many have also wished for a protector friend who would be by their side at all times. I didn’t want a distant amorphous being in the sky, I wanted the flesh and blood Jesus on whose shoulder I could cry, who would laugh at the crazy world with me, and who would stay close to me when I felt too depressed to get out of bed.

Meanwhile, I continued to learn and practice Buddhist teachings.  And I learned that the heart of the Buddha’s teaching is that we can end suffering by letting go of our craving for and attachment to things and people who are impermanent. And yet it’s clear that our craving for impermanent human connection, physical and emotional, is something normal and natural and even healthy for us.

Most teachers living and writing today would say that Buddhist non-attachment means simply knowing and living with the awareness that everyone and everything in our world of form is impermanent.  As Ajahn Chah teaches, ”Someone gave me this glass, and I really like this glass. It holds my water admirably and it glistens in the sunlight. One day the wind may blow it off the shelf, or my elbow may knock it from the table. I know this glass is already broken, so I enjoy it incredibly.”

But if we look at the story of the Buddha’s life, the Buddha abandoned his wife and son at home in order to find his own enlightenment.  This is usually a small footnote in the story of the Buddha-formerly-known-as-Prince-Siddharta, but what does this say about what he meant by non-attachment?  Are we supposed to be non-attached in the way that we can walk away from our loved ones?  Maybe the Buddha suffered a lot when he left his family, but that is not part of the story.

In 12-step programs, we learn to “detach with love.” A beautiful definition of this is from Courage to Change: ”Detachment with love means that I stop depending upon what others do, say, or feel to determine my own well-being or to make my decisions.” This is a lovely concept, but is it really possible or even desirable in human form?  Is it possible not to be distraught when a loved one has attempted suicide or not to feel joy when our partner says he loves us?

And herein lies the edge.  We can read the Buddha’s teaching on non-attachment as a way to avoid the deeply natural need for physical and emotional connection, to separate ourselves from others and keep our need for connection suppressed. Or we can use our practice in a way that connects us more deeply with this impermanent physical life and the impermanent beings in our lives.

“But we are so fond of life that we have no leisure to entertain the terror of death. It is a honeymoon with us all through, and none of the longest. Small blame to us if we give our whole hearts to this glowing bride of ours, to the appetites, to honor, to the hungry curiosity of the mind, to the pleasure of the eyes in nature, and the pride of our own nimble bodies.” — Robert Louis Stevenson

Longing for connection with others is what humans do.  It’s what we are designed to do. Our children are physically attached to us before birth, and after birth are completely dependent on us for every aspect of their being. So how do we practice attached non-attachment?

“Human being is human being.  We can enjoy our life only with our limited body and limited life.  This limitation is vital element for us.  Without limitation nothing exist, so we should enjoy the limitation.  Weak body, strong body; man or woman.  We should—the only way to enjoy our life is to enjoy the limitation which was given to us…

So, ‘the sun-faced buddha, the moon-faced buddha’ does not mean, ‘I don’t care the sun-faced buddha or the moon-faced buddha.’ It means that the sun-faced [hits table with stick] buddha, the moon-faced [hits table with stick] buddha, you know. We should enjoy the sun-faced buddha, the moon-faced buddha. It-it is not indifference. It is the more than attachment-strong, strong attachment to the moon-faced Buddha or the sun-faced buddha. But usually our attachment-we say ‘non-attachment.’ When our attachment reach to the non-attachment, that is real attachment.  So if—if you attach to something, you should attached to something completely.  The sun-faced buddha, the moon-faced buddha!  ’I am here,’ you know, ‘I am right here.’”  – Suzuki Roshi

We are embodied.  Everyone one of us exists in human form.  And the practice of non-attachment is not about getting past our human form, it is about living fully within our human form.  Human beings need other human beings, for physical touch, emotional care, and intellectual stimulation, among other things.  We can live fully in our physical form, fully in our attachment to others within the larger context of knowing that the glass is already broken.

We can’t avoid the pain of living in a human form and loving other beings with our whole heart.  It’s like knowing that we are playing out a human drama on a stage, but embracing our part so completely, that we may not always remember that it’s a play.  We never fully forget that it’s a play- we keep the knowledge that the glass is already broken in our back pocket- but we don’t let that knowledge get in the way of loving each other in the most human embodied way possible.

As Mother Theresa so beautifully said, “Everyone is Jesus in a distressing disguise.”  Knowing that, I don’t have to wait for another sighting in my window.  I can fully embrace other physical beings- each one a real live “Jesus”-  with all my physical attachment and non-attachment simultaneously. And that is just what I always wanted.

with love, annie
02/12 2013 Posted In Contentment/Happiness, Love & Compassion, Mindful, Thoughts From Annie

Being Less Annoyed by Others – Is this Love?

Dear Friends,

I have been thinking about love lately, and not just because Valentine’s Day is near.  But also because there were many times in my life I felt unloved and unloving.  Starting in my teenage years, people I didn’t know usually annoyed me.  People close to me often annoyed me.  And I usually annoyed myself too.  But over the years I have noticed a slow shifting of the plates of my heart so that now, at age 50, I am very much less often annoyed by anyone, myself included.  I even find myself falling in love with people, plants, and animals many times each day.

I am curious about this shift.  It could have to do with practicing meditation and mindfulness, which allows me to see just how similar we all really are, and how our stories and conditioning don’t have to rule our lives.  I think a lot of it comes from being in a long term committed relationship with a partner who, beyond reason, seems to love me no matter how insane I am.  (I remember, with some embarrassment, a day 15 years ago, when I was so annoyed with him that I threw a dinner plate at his head.  And yet he continued to love me.)  It may have a lot to do with becoming a mom of four, or the 5 years I spent in therapy working through layers of anger and hurt.  Or maybe it’s just old age.

This morning as I walked along the lakeshore,
I fell in love with a wren
and later in the day with a mouse
the cat had dropped under the dining room table.

In the shadows of an autumn evening,
I fell for a seamstress
still at her machine in the tailor’s window,
and later for a bowl of broth,
steam rising like smoke from a naval battle.

This is the best kind of love, I thought,
without recompense, without gifts,
or unkind words, without suspicion,
or silence on the telephone.
– Billy Collins, from Aimless Love

Whatever the reason, feeling metta, or loving kindness for others feels a heck of a lot better than being annoyed by them.  I wish I had discovered this secret earlier.  The Buddha describes the four brahma viharas, or heavenly abodes, which are the places where it is most pleasant to dwell.  The four dwelling places are loving-kindness (metta), compassion (karuna), sympathetic joy (mudita) and equanimity or inclusiveness (upekkha). Practicing so that we can dwell more often in these places can bring a lot of ease and happiness to our lives, but it can take time to rewire our brains to stay in these places, rather than run screaming back into the comfort of our irritation.

Loving-kindness is a feeling of warmth toward others, which we can cultivate in meditation practice by silently repeating phrases wishing well to ourselves and others.  Compassion is the ability to be present with others who are suffering without trying to change or run away from their pain.  We can expand our ability to be compassionate by not turning away from suffering when we encounter it, yet also not expecting that we can always do something concrete to alleviate it.

Sympathetic joy is my favorite brahma vihara.  It’s amazing that we don’t take advantage of sympathetic joy more often.  Feeling happy for someone else’s happiness seems so obvious, but so often we feel annoyed by others’ happiness instead.  It’s easy to feel mudita when we see our young nephew thrilled by his new legos, but it’s harder to find that sympathetic joy when someone gets the one thing that we wanted but couldn’t get, like good health, a vacation, or even a child.  The practice of mudita, like the other brahma viharas, directly benefits our own happiness.  As they say in the 12-step program, “Resentment is like taking poison and expecting the other person to die.” No one benefits more from sympathetic joy than we do ourselves.

And lastly equanimity, which may be the most challenging of the four, is the practice of including everything and everyone in our embrace, leaving nothing out.  It means being open to the possibility that we could include everyone and everything in our love– the person who takes our armrest on the plane, the woman who breaks our heart, the tree that falls on our house, the dog that poops on our rug, or even the man that fires us from our job.  It doesn’t mean that we are always able to treat someone who hurt us with the same kindness that we might treat our elderly grandmother.  But it does mean that we can leave the door of our heart ajar for the possibility that they are worthy of our love as well.

“Please call me by my true names, so that I can wake up…  And the door of my heart can be left open.” — Thich Nhat Hanh

So I guess I’ll never know exactly why I am less annoyed by others than I used to be. But I feel sure it has something to do with engaging others at the heart level. Hearing about someone’s deepest longings gives me a window into their beautiful intentions, or who they really are, rather than getting caught by the unskillful and annoying strategies they might be employing.  When my partner chose to view my plate throwing as an intense passion to connect with him rather than a crazy woman’s homicidal tendencies, he was seeing the “real” me in spite of my unskillful action.  And seeing into the heart may well be the secret doorway into compassionate, joyful, and inclusive love.

with love, annie
02/04 2013 Posted In Family, Love & Compassion, Meditation, Mindful, Presence/Showing up, Self-care, Thoughts From Annie

Finding Comfort in Our Own Presence

Dear Friends,

The other evening I had an argument with my husband.  The argument itself wasn’t profound, but the topic raised some sadness in me about my life and forced me to confront change.  At that moment I felt sad about moving on from my role as caregiver to my four, now grown, children.  And I began to cry.

The history of crying in my life is a bit uneven.  As a young child I am pretty sure I cried the typical amount.  Because crying was about as popular as the plague in our household, I created a technique for myself that would prevent me from shedding a single tear in front of my family members.  I would repeat a mantra over and over in my head to keep me from crying.  I can only imagine what my face looked like in those moments — I’m guessing it wasn’t very pretty.  But it was damned effective.  The only time I cried was alone in my room, and mostly under the covers with a pillow over my head.

I wanted confort, but didn’t know where to find it.  When we were given an adorable cockapoo dog, Jocko, he became my crying buddy. Whenever possible, I would cry to Jocko, telling him about all my woes.  He seemed to listen with great care and tenderness.  The perfect comforter!  He would gaze at me with compassionate eyes, listen to every word, and never try to talk me out of my sadness.

As a young adult, I often shared a bedroom with others, so I developed the habit of hiding in the bathroom to cry.  Bathrooms are not the comfiest of rooms, but they were safe and I could run water to cover sobs when needed. At times I had a cat, but most of time he would flee at the first sign of tears.

As soon as I could, I brought dogs back into my life and continued to cry either to the dog, or if s/he wasn’t available, then alone in the bathroom. Being comforted by a dog isn’t exactly the same as being understood by a human, but it was the next best thing.

Last August, our oldest dog passed away.  For a few months we had our daughter’s small Havanese with us (who sadly wasn’t much more of a comfort than a cat), but of late we have been dogless.  So when I needed to cry the other night, I wasn’t sure where to go.  The bathroom I would normally use was too close to where my husband was sleeping. I started crying in my office, but that just didn’t feel right.  Then I remembered that my meditation cushion was quite comfortable and, though the room was cold, there was a space heater nearby.   So I wrapped up in a blanket, went into my meditation space, lit the candles on my altar, and lay down on my meditation cushion to cry.

As I lay there, I was reminded of the many times that I had sat on that cushion. I sat on that cushion when I was concentrated and I sat there when my mind wandered non-stop (which was much more common.)  I sat on that cushion when I was exhausted and dozing off, and I sat on that cushion when I was raging angry with myself or someone else.  And every time I sat I tried my best to stay present for the benefit of myself and all beings.  It wasn’t that I had been mindful all those sitting times — far from it — but I had been trying to be mindful and awake and compassionate.  It was my intention that I remembered and felt at that moment.

Curled up on the cushion crying, I began to feel held by that energy of intention which felt very much like the compassionate care of a dog or another being.  But because it was coming from me, that energy also had the ability to truly understand the sadness that I was feeling.  For one of the first times in my life I truly felt comforted and held in my tears.

To love, in the context of Buddhism, is above all to be there. But being there is not an easy thing. Some training is necessary, some practice. If you are not there, how can you love?  – Thich Nhat Hanh

As a result of this experience, I realized that we all have the ability to comfort ourselves.   When we sit still and really look into our deepest intentions for caring, we can see that we have the desire to care for ourselves and all beings.   Our deepest intentions might not always be obvious, but they are there.  We might have the intention to bring health to our lives, or to work in a vocation that helps others, to teach, or to be an example of mindful living through our own practice.   Marshall Rosenberg calls these intentions “universal needs.”  We all have them.     In Buddhism, this part of ourselves is called our Buddha Nature.  It’s the part that is already awake.  In other traditions it has other names.  Getting familiar with this part of ourselves can be a benefit to ourselves and those around us.  Because when we know this part, we know that even when those around us aren’t able to give us the comfort we need, we can always find it right here within ourselves.

with love, annie
11/06 2012 Posted In Contentment/Happiness, Family, Friends & Community, Love & Compassion, Meditation, Mindful, Presence/Showing up, Simple Living, Thoughts From Annie

Like a Tree.

linden tree at plum village

Dear Friends,

Since my dog Gus died this past August, I have become more aware of our two fluffy cats.  One of them, Addie, is quite the princess (her kindest nickname) and doesn’t seem to care if we are nearby, or even whether we exist.

The early morning used to be the one time that she engaged me, loudly, because she knew that I was going to be serving her canned food.  But a few weeks ago I switched to canned vegan cat food (a macrobiotic mix of veggies and whole grains) and so now she generally ignores me 24/7.

One chilly morning this week, I went into my meditation room to practice and I closed the door behind me to keep in the heat.  A few minutes into my sitting, I heard someone pawing the door.  When she got no answer (I was trying to meditate) she upped the banging.  Pretty soon she was meowing, screeching, and finally resorted to swiping her paw back and forth under the door to get my attention.

addie with attitude

Since this was so out of character for her, I got up and let her into the room.  I assumed that she wanted me to get up and get her breakfast or fill the sink with water for her to drink.  I worried that she might disturb my practice by continuing to harass me once I let her in.  But she didn’t.  Instead she curled up quietly behind me, indulged in some badly needed fur cleaning, and just chilled with me.   I was surprised and delighted to have her sitting in the room with me.

That episode reminded me of something that Thich Nhat Hanh said when I was in Plum Village this past June.  He said that sometimes we can be there for someone without doing a thing.  Like when we sit near a tree and we feel that the tree is there for even though it doesn’t say or do anything at all.

When we sit down under a tree, we aren’t expecting the tree to do anything, but yet we still feel comforted just being there in its shade.  It’s the same with all of us.  It can be truly comforting and joyful to be with another being, in silence, with no agenda.

It’s a teaching that I try to remind myself when someone shares their difficulties with me.  I often feel like I have to say something or do something or even be something in order to help them.  But then I remember how comforting a tree can be, and I let myself off the hook.  Very often, being present for the other person (or cat) is enough.

The quieter you become, the more you can hear.  – Ram Dass

Some of you may have lost trees in this last storm.  And even though the tree didn’t make you dinner, didn’t help you move, or give you any good advice, you probably felt a loss.  That tree just stood by, and by just standing by, it provided some comfort.  Heck, the Buddha became enlightened while sitting under a tree is silence.

And when Addie curled up in the room with me, I realized that she was looking for that same kind of tree love and offering it to me as well.  She didn’t want water or petting and she definitely didn’t want her vegan breakfast, she just wanted to sit under my tree.  I know how she feels.   I love to sit near my friends and loved ones (even cats), and quietly relax.  Especially in the darker, wintery months, it sure is nice to curl up together with nothing to do and just be there for each other.  And in some ways, our quiet presence is the most precious gift we can give each other.

with love, annie
«Older Posts