The experience has been a dream come true.
Just walking the halls before and after class at The Center for Mindfulness I get this kid-on-Christmas-morning feeling when I think about the incredible legacy of human beings who have worked, gathered and/or sat in that building in the concerted effort to share the gift of mindfulness with the Western world and beyond.
My new teacher brought up this very legacy at our first gathering.
She invited us to imagine ourselves as similar to Russian Nesting Dolls, or Matryoshka Dolls; a set of wooden dolls of varying sizes in which one sits inside the other.
When I allowed myself to contemplate little me as a teeny tiny doll on the inside of layers and layers of larger dolls that represented an inheritance of a growing community and leaders (of all shapes and sizes) in western mindfulness meditation, my cup runneth over.
How did I get so lucky?
Maybe it's not luck though...
There were definite causes and conditions that brought me to that exact moment that I entered the building where the founder of MBSR made roots.
Consider this poem by twentieth century American poet William Stafford:
The Way It Is
There's a thread you follow. It goes among
things that change. But it doesn't change.
People wonder about what you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it you can't get lost.
Tragedies happen; people get hurt
or die; and you suffer and get old.
Nothing you do can stop time's unfolding.
You don't ever let go of the thread.
And here's the punchline, or maybe the paradox, if I look deeply (as Buddhist teacher and author Thich Nhat Hanh recommends that we do) at the thread William Stafford refers to that brought me to this intersection with MBSR at The Center for Mindfulness, I would unquestionably encounter my own full catastrophe.
In the beginning of Full Catastrophe Living: How to Cope with Stress, Pain and Illness Using Mindfulness Meditation Jon Kabat-Zinn tells the story of how the unique title of his book was born from a memorable scene from the movie version of the novel Zorba the Greek. He tells the story like this:
Zorba's young companion [in the movie] turns to him at a certain point and inquires, 'Zorba, have you ever been married' to which Zorba replies, growling, 'Am I not a man? Of course I've been married. Wife, house, kids...the full catastrophe!"
It was not mean to be a lament, nor does it mean that being married or having children is a catastrophe. Zorba's response embodies supreme appreciation for the richness of life and the inevitability of all its dilemmas, sorrows, traumas, tragedies, and ironies...
Ever since I first heard it, I have felt that the phrase 'the full catastrophe' captures something positive about the human spirit's ability to come to grips with what is most difficult in life and to find within it room to grow in strength and wisdom. For me, facing the full catastrophe means finding and coming to terms with what is deepest and best and ultimately, what is most human within ourselves. There is not one person on the planet who does not have his or her own version of the full catastrophe.
Catastrophe here does not mean disaster. Rather, it means the poignant enormity of our experience.
In class this week my teacher asked us, the MBSR students, to consider what were the causes and conditions that made up our own path, or Way, to this particular moment at The Center for Mindfulness.
At first glance, the exercise seemed relatively straightforward.
For instance, I reflected back on particular influences from childhood and young adulthood who had contributed to my early interest in yoga. I recognized the growing hunger I had had throughout my 30's for a saner way to live that would be helpful to myself and others as well.
But then, as I looked deeper, the thread began to include some of the most sorrowful moments of my life as well.
A miscarriage.
A death of a friend to AIDS when I was a teenager.
Alcoholic loved ones.
A father-in-law with early-onset Alzheimer's.
I also saw the emergence of words and phrases that felt like a truth I had known my whole life when I read them for the first time.
"I live my life in widening circles." -Rainer Maria Rilke
"Mindfulness is the basis of happiness." -Thich Nhat Hanh
"What will you do with your one wild precious life." -Mary Oliver
"Don't turn your head. Keep looking at the bandaged place. That's where the Light enters you." -Jelladin Rumi
When I finished the exercise, it was poignantly clear to me that to have escaped "the full catastrophe" would have been to have escaped my life. The alternative to which would be a full embodiment of life and living exactly as god, grace and the universe itself would have it.
Yeah, I gotta admit I'm pretty far from that too...
I am now nearing the halfway point in this intensive study though, and I'm getting a little more comfortable with the fact that I honestly don't know where this thread will ultimately lead me.
And wherever my thread winds and ravels to and from, I do know for certain, my relationship to the "full catastrophe" is shifting from a resentful resignation toward a kinder and more loving acceptance of what 13th Century Sufi poet Jelladin Rumi called "the bandaged place."
I credit this shift to two things.
One: Mystery. (And for anyone who knows me, this is a very unlikely thing for me to say!)
And Two: Legacy. A sentiment captured perfectly by these words by 20th century Jungian Author Joseph Campbell in his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces:
We have not even to risk the journey alone, for the heroes of all times have gone before us. The labyrinth is thoroughly known. We have only to follow the thread of the hero path, and where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a god. And where we sought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves. Where we had thought to travel outward, we will have come to the center of our existence. And where we had thought to be alone, we will be with all the world.
