Embodying Dharma

A new favorite pastime of mine is to admire dharma in action.

Ever since I read Stephen Cope's book The Great Work of Your Life, I have been noticing more and more occasions of catching my breath as I glimpse the  sheer elegant beauty of a human being enacting and embodying their vocation, calling or dharma- it is truly the definition of breath-taking.

It reminds me of the 13^th Century poet Jalaluddin Rumi's poem, “Each Note” that goes like this:

Advice doesn't help lovers!

They're not the kind of mountain stream

you can build a dam across.

An intellectual doesn't know what the drunk is feeling!

Don't try to figure what those lost inside love will do next!

Someone in charge would give up all his power,

if he caught one whiff of the wine-musk

from the room where lovers are doing who-knows- what!

One of them tries to dig a hole through a mountain.

One flees from academic honors.

One laughs at famous mustaches!

Life freezes if it doesn't get a taste

of this almond cake.

The stars come up spinning

every night, bewildered in love.

They'd grow tired with that revolving, if they weren't.

They'd say, "How long do we have to Do this!"

God picks up the reed-flute world and blows.

Each note is a need coming through one of us,

a passion, a longing-pain.

Remember the lips

where the wind-breath originated,

and let your note be clear.

Don't try to end it .

BE Your Note.

I'll show you how it's enough.

Go up on the roof at night

in the city of the soul.

Let Everyone climb on their roofs

and sing their notes!

Sing loud!

The interesting and surprising piece of this new joyful activity though, is it shows up at times when I would not necessarily expect it, or, at least, I’m not looking for it.

In the past, I think I associated the embodiment of dharma with individuals like Mr. Cope writes about in his book.  Notable figures who are The Greats of our history like Harriet Tubman, Mahatma Ghandi, Robert Frost, and Henry David Thoreau.  People who have had books written about them because they continue to inspire generation after generation. 

But also in Mr. Cope’s book are stories about us regular, everyday people.  People about whom there is likely no book written and whom nobody knows other than our own small, personal tribe.  Lately, these are the people I’ve been noticing in my day-to-day life.  And it has been a joy.

Two recent examples.

I have been driving the same way to work at roughly the same time for the past six years, and as my fellow commuters will know, when you travel the same route each day you become familiar with the other travelers (be it in a car, bus, train, bike or by foot) whose morning commute seems to parallel your own.

Part of my commute includes crossing a wide, busy intersection in a city that is one block from an elementary school, and this intersection has a crossing guard.

This crossing guard is amazing. 

Not only does she burst forth immediately when the light turns red into the middle of the intersection (knowing as well as I do that many people do not always respect the red light) with little but her hand-held stop sign to protect her, but she does it with a smile.  A smile.

And not just a couple of days out of the week.

I have driven by her Monday through Friday from September to June each year for the past 6 years, and she is consistently smiling.

I first knew how special this person was when I began to notice that most of the children who pass through this intersection consistently look over their shoulder to say one last “goodbye” or “have a nice day” to the crossing guard as their parent is walking them quickly down the street to be on time to school.

And it makes sense because she appears to know the name of each and every pedestrian who passes through her intersection, makes a point to talk individually to each child, and does not leave the middle of intersection until every last man, woman and child has made it across the intersection safely even if the light has already turned green. 

In the 30-60 seconds that my path crosses with this person 5 days a week, I truly look forward to seeing someone who appears to joyfully embody her dharma.  It inspires me as I go on in my day walking my own path.

Another recent example of witnessing dharma in action has been with my son’s Little League coach.

Now, I am not a huge sports person, and with all the horror stories about coaches and parents who take the whole sports thing a little too far (i.e. a coach only focusing on winning the game and the kids are just 1^st graders or a parent going ballistic because the best player was not covering 1^st base), I can be a little apprehensive about team sports these days.  But this year is pure magic.

My son’s coach seems to have a love of teaching baseball like I’ve never seen before.  Of course he has a day job, as we all do, but this coach’s passion for instilling a genuine love for baseball, sportsmanship, and teaching the very concept of practice (of any new craft) as a means of development and growth in a child is awe-inspiring.

Since starting this Little League season I’ve now grown accustomed to this coach’s motivational videos he sends to each player during the week, the game balls he passes out at the end of each game to the player who demonstrated whatever skill he coach wanted to highlight that week, and the head-to-toe sheer enthusiasm he has from beginning to end of each baseball practice and every game.

What’s more, like the crossing guard, I notice the children’s positive responses to the coach, and I stand by the truth that children are excellent detectors of authenticity (aka bull-shit detectors).

And for me, seeing this individual every Thursday, Saturday and Sunday embody his dharma as a Little League coach, is a joy that fills me up too because genuine joyfulness is contagious.

As actor and Parkinson’s Activist Michael J. Fox noted in his 2009 documentary, Adventures Of An Incurable Optimist, there may be key elements that contribute to what one might call “happiness,” and I think Mr. Cope’s book and my recent observations would be evidence that some of those elements may have to do with embodying one’s own dharma, vocation or calling.

Of course we know this is neither new information nor rocket science, and yet it is oh-so-easy to forget.  Have you ever noticed that?

What will help me to remember to remember to embody my dharma will be my daily mindful observations of other spiritual warriors in action- look out for them, they are everywhere!

And maybe, like Rumi says, I will also try to “BE Your Note. I'll show you how it's enough.”

Vulnerability & Death

This morning my husband told me a story about a teenage girl who died this past weekend. 

While I was taking my son to Little League and my daughter to gymnastics, this young girl died tragically when a tree fell on her while she laid in a hammock in her backyard.

Her family tried to save her by having her rushed to the hospital by Life Star, but she didn’t make it.

When you hear dramatic and traumatic stories like these it is like someone pouring a bucket of ice water over your head.  Like the intensity of freezing cold water, you quickly wake up to the fact that you have again fallen asleep to the reality of your own death and those of your loved ones.  And with this harsh reminder, you are brought back to your senses that you too are invulnerable.

Vulnerability and death are two topics that I think about a lot.  In part because of the type of work I do with chronically suicidal people, but also having lived closed to several people who have been sick and died.

Most recently I’ve been living up close and personal with vulnerability and death as I’ve supported my mother in her cancer treatment.

Two weeks ago I brought her to her first chemotherapy infusion.

For those of you who have been through it, you already know the drill.  But for those of you who don’t, when a patient goes to the hospital (or in our case it is a satellite site for the hospital) for their chemotherapy infusion, she or he sits in a room with other cancer patients who are receiving their infusions at the same time.

The room we were in was large enough to treat 6 cancer patients at a time- each patient with his or her own big, leather recliner chair, IV drip and uncomfortable plastic chair next to it for the person who drove him or her to treatment.

Being only 38 years old and not having gone through cancer myself, it was surreal to be so up close and personal with illness that has the potential for death.

Though I think the personal and intimate nature of family illness is sacred territory and very different from the professional realm, you might think because of the type of work I do with folks who think about taking their own lives nearly every day might have better prepared me for this Chemotherapy Infusion Room, and who knows, maybe it did in some small way. 

But I think what got me, what really threw me off, was when I walked into the room and saw a woman in the room whose child is a year younger than mine and goes to the same elementary school, and she too was receiving chemotherapy.

It was like, one minute I was really trying to stay in my logical mind to keep it all together emotionally and listen to all of the nurse’s instructions, and then I see a mother younger than I and: BAM! Bucket of ice water right over the head! Vulnerability.

This topic of vulnerability has gotten a lot of attention recently with the popularity of Social Researcher (and Texan) Brene Brown including all of her books, interviews, TED talks and endorsement by Oprah Winfrey.

To me this is long overdue, especially in the connections she makes between vulnerability and shame and vulnerability and courage.

But when I think about vulnerability and death, I feel drawn to Philosopher and Poet David Whyte’s observations on vulnerability.  He says:

Vulnerability is not a weakness, a passing indisposition, or something we can arrange to do without; vulnerability is not a choice, vulnerability is the underlying, ever present, and abiding under-current of our natural state. To run from vulnerability is to run from the essence of our nature; the attempt to be invulnerable is the vain attempt to become something we are not and most especially to close off our understanding of the grief of others.

What seems especially relevant to me, in the context of my recent experience bringing my mother to chemotherapy is this last line: “Especially to close off our understanding of the grief of others.” Such an insightful observation.  How often do we avoid people, places and things that remind us of death and the invulnerability of ourselves and our beloveds?

See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil, right?  If I just delude myself into forgetfulness of the reality that eventually everything and everyone will fall away in an un-prescribed time, then maybe it won’t really happen…

Not that I’m judging.  This is the human struggle right? I suppose this is where we might pull from all we know from the Buddhist teachings and practices about death, impermanence, ignorance, and delusion to help ourselves with this seemingly impossible piece of radical acceptance.

What is miraculous then, are those few and far between individuals who actually lean into the vulnerability that surrounds death- examples of which might be the Zen Hospice Project in San Francisco, California, one of many I’m sure.

Mr. Whyte encourages this possibility to lean into vulnerability with the following:

To have a temporary, isolated sense of power over all events and circumstances is a lovely, illusionary privilege and perhaps the prime and most beautifully constructed conceit of being human and especially of being youthfully human, but it is a privilege that must be surrendered with that same youth, with ill health, with accident, with the loss of loved ones who do not share our untouchable powers, powers eventually and most emphatically given up as we approach our last breath. The only choice we have as we mature is how we inhabit our vulnerability, how we inhabit our vulnerability, how we become larger and more courageous and more compassionate through our intimacy with disappearance. Our choice is to inhabit vulnerability as generous citizens of loss, robustly and fully, or conversely, as misers and complainers, reluctant, and fearful, always at the gates of existence, but never bravely and completely attempting to enter, never wanting to risk ourselves, never walking fully through the door.

So it seems we have a choice with Vulnerability and Death or Loss. We can either pick:

Door A: Inhabit vulnerability as generous citizens of loss or

Door B: Stand always at the gates of existence, but never bravely and completely attempting to enter.

Which will it be? Which door will you choose?

My guess for me, particularly in regards to death as the most radical form of impermanence, is a vacillation between the two. 

I will likely (ungracefully) continue to walk in and out (just as I literally walked in and out of the Chemotherapy Infusion Room) of vulnerability.  And I will try to be self-compassionate each time, to myself and others, because I don’t think there is any place for judgment here.

Yours tenderly.

Claire.

Little Zen Teachers Part II

Last October I collected a series of little anecdotes from the wisdom of the youngest amongst us, our children.

Since that time, I’ve continued to be open to the opportunities available that I might learn from children. I have also continued to gather their stories. 

Themes vary from awe and wonder to justice and ethics.  Here are just three more from my now 7 year-old son.

Remember to Love Yourself Too

It is the weekend, and my son and I setting up the art supplies to make Valentine Cards for 18 first graders.

While I am daunted and somewhat dragging my feet on this task, my son is energetically assembling the glue, scissors and construction paper in their specified place.  He is thrilled.

He begins the V-Day Project by making a list of his entire class to be sure no Valentine has been forgotten.  He then assigns my task of putting red heart stickers onto each card and box of candy hearts.  All in all the process is very organized and methodical- quite impressive actually.

As I am working diligently to keep up with the CEO of Valentine’s Day (aka: my son), I feel a need to authoritatively say to him, “Remember to make 18 cards for everyone in your class.”

He responds without a beat and not even looking up from his list, “Nope, it should be 21 cards.”

“21?” I stop working and look up at him to question his math.

“There are only 18 kids in your class though.”

“No, there are 19 of us, plus Ms. S and Ms. M.” (Okay, so he’s including his 1^st grade teacher and his Kindergarten teacher, but who’s #19?)

At that moment I look over at my son’s hand-written list and notice his name on it too.

Of course, he’s making a card for himself!  Why wouldn’t he?

But more importantly, why would it have never occurred to me to send myself some love each and every time I am sending out a whole lot of love to literally everyone else? 

I’ll try to remember that next time…

What is True Equality?

It is evening time, and I my son and I are playing a game at the dining table.

It is a game he has made up himself that has a similar set of rules to the card game poker. 

He has carefully hand-made the cards each of us will draw from, 6 cards each, and has collected a variety of small toys (many of them Legos) that will act as our money to ante up into the pot that you will win if your hand of cards beats your opponents.

We are now well into the game, and my son is winning by a lot.  I am down to just one or two toys to put into the pot in a last ditch hope to get some loot back.  Meanwhile his side of the dining table is spilling over with toys (or money) that he’s won in the last several hands of cards.

Unfortunately though, it looks like I am going to lose.  I want to stay in the game and keep playing, but it is time to ante up and I have nothing left to put in the pot.

But before I can say to my son: “You Win!” he has taken toys from his pile and put them into the pot.

I stop him.  I say, “No, it’s not your turn.  It’s mine, and I have nothing to put in.”

“I know,” he says unbothered.  “But you don’t have any, and I do.”

As those of you who spend time with small children know, rules in made-up games can be quite fluid- I try to keep up. 

“So you won then.”

“No I didn’t,” my son casually responds. “You just don’t have anything to put in, so I put it in for you.  It wouldn’t make sense if I didn’t.  I have a lot. You don’t.”

Then he paused his movement in the game, and gave me a quizzical look—eye  brows knitted—trying to figure out what my hang up was about.

Not immediately responding, I looked at him, and then down at the pot of “money.”  To him, to a child, this was a no-brainer: Them that have, shall give.  He clearly saw the game as a “we,” not an “I,” and as cooperation not competition.

I picked up my hand-made cards again and resumed playing.  I realized that my son had just rearranged the furniture in my mind for what is true equality.

Future Seeker?

My son and I are driving in the car.  I’m in the front driver’s seat, and he’s in the back in his booster.

We’ve been going along in silence for a while, and suddenly he speaks up.

“Mom?”

“Yes?”

“I know that zero times anything is zero because that is the rule in multiplication.”

“That’s right,” I say, impressed that he’s already getting into multiplication tables at school.

“But, why is that? I understand that that is the rule, but why is it that way?”

I pause and take a quick look back at my son in the rearview mirror. 

Not being a mathematician I realize I have no idea what the answer is to his question, and I give a quick unsatisfactory response of “I’m not sure my love, we’ll have to look that one up on the internet.”

Quietly inside though, I admire what underlies his question. 

In that moment it seemed a child was unsatisfied with the simple truth of a rule- he wanted a deeper understanding of how things work.  He had curiosity to want to grasp an idea from both the outside in and the inside out.

It seemed to me that such a simple question had the early markings of a seeker, and I wished to follow his lead.

Poetry Penetrates the Impenetrable

Each day, before I meditate, I read a passage from a book that is intended to help me focus my attention and intention.

The books vary greatly, but they mainly could be categorized as nonfiction prose written about spirituality, religion or philosophy.

Every once in a while though I find my brain seems to have stone-walled any new input.

I will be sitting on my living room floor on my meditation cushion reading and re-reading the same sentence or paragraph again and again, but not internalizing its meaning.

This of course causes me to become very frustrated, which in turn guarantees that no new knowledge or understanding will be coming through to me that day. 

I have learned though, through this trial and error process, that poetry, not prose, can sometimes penetrate what feels like a brick wall of stuckness inside of me.

This awareness came through to me much more clearly when I heard British poet and philosopher David Whyte describe the potential for poetry in this way:

I always say that poetry is language against which you have no defenses. Otherwise, it’s not poetry. It’s prose. Which is about something. And so poetry is that moment in a conversation where you have to have the other person understand what you’re saying. And sometimes, it’s when you’re delivering terrible news, news of a death or an accident. And you have to tell the other person, and they have to hear it. And you have to say it in such a way that it’s heard fully. But you have to say it, also, with the intimacy of care and of understanding at the same time.

“Against which you have no defenses.”  That’s it. That is totally it.

Poetry cuts right through my intellectualizing and rationalizing, my humor, my suppressing and repressing, my fantasizing and of course my near and dear sublimating.  Have I missed any?

It’s like one minute I am feeling aloof, disconnected and unfocused.  And the next, I am yanked, head-first into the moment- head, heart, body and all.  It’s delicious!

American poet Mary Oliver says this of poetry:

Poetry is prayer, it is passion and story and music, it is beauty, comfort, it is agitation, declaration, it is thanksgiving… Often poetry is the gate to a new life. Or, sometimes the restoration of an old world gone…poetry can quicken, enliven the interior world of the listener… Poetry is a life-cherishing force… For poems are not words, after all, but fires for the cold, ropes let down to the lost, something as necessary as bread in the pockets of the hungry. Yes, indeed.

I have included below a few poems that have been able to break through the seemingly impermeable space between the outer world and my well-protected soul inside.  Sometimes, it wasn’t even the whole poem either- it may have been just a line, or even just a word.

Really incredible when you sit back and think about it…

Please enjoy the poems, and consider sharing some of your own favorite poems that broke through your own interior brick wall.

Body Intelligence, by Jelaluddin Rumi

Your intelligence is always with you,

overseeing your body, even though

you may not be aware of its work.

If you start doing something

against your health, your intelligence

will eventually scold you.

If it had not been so lovingly close by,

and so constantly monitoring,

how could it rebuke?

You and your body’ intelligence

are like the beauty and precision

of an astrolabe.

Together, you calculate how near

existence is to the sun.

Your intelligence is marvelously intimate.

It is not in front of you or behind,

or to the left or the right.

Now, my friend, try to describe how near

is the creator of your intelligence.

There are guides

who can show you the way.

Use them.

But they will not satisfy your longing.

Keep wanting the connection with presence

with all your pulsing energy.

The throbbing vein

will take you further

than any thinking.

Muhammed said, Do not theorize

about essence. All speculations

are just more layers of covering.

Human beings love coverings.

They think the designs on the curtains

are what is being concealed.

Observe the wonders as they occur around you.

Do not claim them. Feel the artistry

moving through, and be silent.

The Buddha’s Last Instruction, by Mary Oliver

“Make of yourself a light,”

said the Buddha,

before he died.

I think of this every morning

as the east begins

to tear off its many clouds

of darkness, to send up the first

signal — a white fan

streaked with pink and violet,

even green.

An old man, he lay down

between two sala trees,

and he might have said anything,

knowing it was his final hour.

The light burns upward,

it thickens and settles over the fields.

Around him, the villagers gathered

and stretched forward to listen.

Even before the sun itself

hangs, disattached, in the blue air,

I am touched everywhere

by its ocean of yellow waves.

No doubt he thought of everything

that had happened in his difficult life.

And then I feel the sun itself

as it blazes over the hills,

like a million flowers on fire —

clearly I’m not needed,

yet I feel myself turning

into something of inexplicable value.

Slowly, beneath the branches,

he raised his head.

He looked into the faces of that frightened crowd.

[My favorite line in this poem is: clearly I’m not needed, / yet I feel myself turning /

into something of inexplicable value. Gorgeous language.]

“Unknown Title” by Jelaluddin Rumi

I went inside my heart

to see how it was.

Something there makes me hear

the whole world weeping.

Then I went to every city and small town,

searching for someone who could speak wisdom,

but everyone was complaining about love.

That moaning gave me an idea: Go back inside

and find the answer. But I found nothing.

The heart acts as translator between

mystical experience and intelligence.

It has its own inhabitants who do not talk

with someone just wandering through.

And remember that Muhammed said of the place

in human beings we call the heart,

This is what I value.

If I hold you with my emotions,

you'll become a wished-for companion.

If I hold you with my eyes,

you'll grow old and die.

So I hold you where we

both mix with the infinite.

[I love the very first line in this poem: I went inside my heart / to see how it was.]

This Trembling Heart by Rashani

i did not wake up one day

and choose to love you

or decide

that my life would now

be focused

in your direction.

this trembling heart

like a magnetized needle

of a compass,

a splayed, obsidian lotus

in a sea of fire

simply returns again

and mysteriously again

to where your soul resides ,

to the breathing star dust

and tender flesh

which temporarily hold

the flowering river

of who you are.