04/22 2013 Posted In Contentment/Happiness, Meditation, Mindful, Non-attachment/Letting go, Thoughts From Annie

The Elixir in the Box

Dear Friends,

I have been on a lot of different spiritual paths over these last 50 years. I was baptized Methodist, and raised going to a politically progressive Presbyterian church. I discovered meditation as a teenager, sometimes considered myself an atheist, dabbled in wicca, and became a yogi. I attended Divinity school at Howard University, founded a yoga and mindfulness studio, and was ordained in a Buddhist tradition.

Wandering through each of these traditions, I discovered a lot of differences in the practices and yet all were leading to the same ineffable state known as enlightenment, nirvana, rapture, oneness, or simply contentment. Listening to the Buddhist nun Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo, I heard a useful metaphor for my experience: she said that we are all seeking the same spiritual elixir, but it resides in a multitude of boxes, each decorated with specific rituals and cultural practices.

Each box is both fascinating and familiar to us. We are most comfortable with the boxes we were raised with, but we can also be intrigued by exploring boxes from other cultures. Yoga, Buddhism and the African-American church may have been less familiar boxes, but I was always looking for the same elixir.

As Palmo also mentions, the elixir itself doesn’t appear to be very interesting, especially compared to the box itself. Contentment isn’t very exciting, so we often forget that it’s the real prize. But because we aren’t able to access the elixir any other way, we must go through one of the boxes. The Buddha described this same concept with a different metaphor.  He said that the only way to get from the shore of suffering to the shore of non-suffering is to build a raft and sail across.

What sometimes happens is that we get so caught up in the box’s beauty and ornamentation that we forget what we are really after — the elixir, the contentment, the joy. We can get caught up in meditating, doing yoga, going to services, or studying religious texts and miss the enlightenment in front of us in this moment. Or to use the Buddha’s metaphor: when we reach the shore of non-suffering instead of letting go of the raft, we mistakenly pick it up and carry it with us.

The practices, rituals, and cultural aspects of a spiritual path are the raft or the beautiful box from which we can arrive at the shore of non-suffering and find the contentment that we have been longing for. We need the box to get to the elixir and we need the raft to get to the other shore. And at the same time we need to remember that the box is not the elixir, and the raft is not the shore.

“It is often said that the Buddha’s teaching is only a raft to help you cross the river, a finger pointing to the moon. Don’t mistake the finger for the moon. The raft is not the shore. If we cling to the raft, if we cling to the finger, we miss everything.” — Thich Nhat Hanh (Being Peace)

When I find myself caught up in the activity or ritual of practice, such as practicing yoga just to be able to say I did, or trying to look perfect while sitting in meditation, I remind myself of what I really want — the core of all spiritual paths, the shore of non-suffering. And now and then, when I am able to let go of my attachment to the practice without letting go of the practice itself, I get a taste of that sweet elixir.  Ahhh.

with love, annie
03/13 2013 Posted In Difficulties & Loss, Family, Friends & Community, Mindful, Non-attachment/Letting go, Thoughts From Annie

Where do we go when we die?

Dear Friends,

I spent a full day this week at the hospital with a dear 82-year-old friend and her family.  What I thought was going to be a one hour conference with the doctor, her family and myself, turned into eight hours of meditation and discussion about whether to resuscitate our friend should she stop breathing again.  She had been resuscitated two times earlier in the week, and was being kept alive by the combination of breathing apparatus and feeding tube connected directly into her intestines.

In the end her sons made the final call.  They decided to have her resuscitated if her breathing or heart failed again, and to keep her on the life support even while three different “super bugs” chewed through her body. For them they had to make a decision that would allow them to sleep at night. And not resuscitating her would have been tantamount to “giving up” in their minds. They weren’t ready to let go of their beloved mother.

This is a decision process that many of us will have to go through at some point with a loved one.  We want to keep them with us as long as possible.  And we also don’t want them to suffer.  My friend’s son put it this way, “I am sure that ma doesn’t want to die, that I know. And I know that she doesn’t want to keep suffering like this.” Wouldn’t we all say that about ourselves and our loved ones.  It’s human nature that we don’t want to die and we don’t want to suffer. So it’s hard to make decisions about when someone has had enough suffering and is ready to go.

The Buddha never commented on whether there was another life after this one.  When asked, he kept silent.  What he did say was, “I teach only suffering and the end of suffering.”  And for the Buddha it was clear that clinging to anything in the realm of form, including our body or our loved one’s body, was a source suffering. And at the same time he taught that we don’t have a completely separate self or soul that continues intact.  Form is Emptiness and Emptiness is Form.  We are not this body and we are also not something other than this body.

So where does that leave us in making end of life decisions?   I can see that my friend is not this deteriorating body full of bedsores, MRSA, and failing digestive system. That is clear.  So if she’s not in that body, then where can I find my friend?

Because she spent so much time with us and my kids while they were young, I find my friend in the twinkle in my kids’ eyes when then talk about how silly and feisty she was.  I find her in my own resilience to difficulties as I watched her facing the psychiatric breakdown of one daughter and the homelessness of another.  One of my go-to stories that makes me laugh and cry at the same time is this one:  She was walking down the street one evening and heard a crack and felt wetness flowing down her neck.  Realizing that she had been hit over the head by a would-be assailant and was bleeding, she kept her head up and continued to walk briskly to her destination.  The attacker, who must have been shocked by the strength and stamina of this petite woman, fled.  Even though it happened to her, it has given me courage through the years.

“You are like a candle. Imagine you are sending light out all around you. All your words, thoughts and actions are going in many directions. If you say something kind, your kind words go in many directions, and you yourself go with them. We are …transforming and continuing in a different form at every moment.”  – Thich Nhat Hanh, from No Death, No Fear

I also find my friend in the eyes and manners of her sons and her nieces.  Sitting with them in the hospital for so many hours, there was no doubt in my mind that she was right there with us.  The stories we told and the ways that we were changed by our interactions with her are permanent and will continue on through our own lives and through the energies and memories that we pass along to future generations. Even though we are empty we exist and we inter-are with and influence everything around us.

“If our boats are empty, though there is still a vessel carried by the prevailing winds and currents there is not ‘someone’ in it to be misunderstood…Everything is in perfect harmony.  Nothing is pulling against the natural flow.  No one in the boat: no one to suffer”  – Stephen Levine, from Who Dies?

Seeing all of this, I know that I never have to let go of my friend.  The outcome for all of us is the same.  We will leave this fathom-long body at some point in the not so distant future. But because there is no “me” or “her” to let go of, there is no letting go.  We are transforming and sending ourselves out in every moment of our lives. And the last moment, when we lose this body, is just another moment of transformation.

with love, annie
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
02/20 2013 Posted In Mindful, Perceptions & Thoughts, Thoughts From Annie

Whose Questions are You trying to Answer?

Dear Friends,

The story of how the Buddha got started on his path to enlightenment goes something like this: He was born around 500 BC, a wealthy prince in India with all the associated trappings.  His parents wanted to protect him from seeing the pain of living, mostly because they wanted him to focus on his role as a prince, and not get distracted by those larger questions about life.  He lived in relative happiness as a prince until he was nearly 30.  In the meantime, he got married and fathered one son.

The story goes that one day the future Buddha, then known as Prince Siddartha, left the palace by chariot on some sort of errand. They passed by a man who was quite old and frail, and the prince asked his Charioteer Channa what was wrong with the man.  Channa replied that the man was simply old and that everyone will get old.  This surprised the prince.  They then passed a man who was quite ill and in agony.  Again the prince asked what this was, and Channa replied that this man was sick, and that everyone will get sick during their lives.  Finally, they passed a corpse, and the prince asked what this was, and Channa told him that the corpse was a dead person, and that everyone eventually dies.

Seeing all of this, the prince began to wonder about old age, sickness, and death, and he was inspired to find out how he could help people overcome the suffering that these states create.  Not long after this, he left his family and set out to try to answer those questions for himself. His journey to enlightenment was driven by his intention to answer his questions.  And this unique journey is what lead to his final enlightenment, or waking up to what really is.

When I was young, I sometimes lay awake nights asking myself questions about the universe.  What are the billions of other people in the world doing right now – are they really there when I don’t see them?  How can we not repress our emotions and also not spew them out in ways that alienate others?  Can my dog really understand what I am saying? Are the people I see in my dreams really with me then or is it just in my mind? Not all of my questions were profound, but they were my questions and they were guideposts for my own journey into adulthood.

Recently I have begun to wonder whether I am still focused on my own questions, or whether I am instead trying to answer the questions of others. Martin Luther King, Jr. followed his own questions, which he articulated in many of his speeches, including:  Can this country really operate as if all men were created equal? And can former slaves, and the sons of former slave owners sit down together in brotherhood?  American Buddhist nun Pema Chodron asked whether her depression could really be a doorway into understanding.  Her question led her into a surprising and authentic life of living and teaching mindfulness. I think if we look at the people we see living authentic lives, we will find that they are following their own questions.

We each have a particular way of shaping ourselves in the world. To take on someone else’s conversational style and to keep repeating other people’s questions as if they were our own is to exhaust ourselves.  It doesn’t matter if it is the thoughts of Socrates or Susan Sontag.  Read and admire, but then go back to first principles and ask the question yourself in your own way.  Dare to disagree. — David Whyte

We are not Prince Siddhartha, the Buddha, Martin Luther King, or Pema Chodron.  And we may look to these or other guides to help us formulate our questions.  But if we really want to wake up, we need to find our own questions. What is it that we want to know in this short lifetime? And we need more than the mere minutes between events to find our deepest questions, we need to take the time to sit still and see what is calling us today.  What are the questions that call to us to be answered?  Can we let our lives be guided by those questions?  As the poet Mary Oliver asks, “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”

with love, annie
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