A Small Spiritual Life

During political and social times such as these, I worry that my spiritual life may be too small.

I have a feeling though, I am not alone in this.  And not just in terms of a spiritual life.

A few weeks ago I read a blog by a well-known author of many books (Dani Shapiro) that began like this:

During the past several days I have started to write a post, and then stopped.  Started, then stopped.  And I’ll tell you exactly the thought process, verbatim, that has raced through my mind each time I sat down to write.  Who cares?  Why me?  How can writing possibly help with the state of the world is in such profound chaos?  What makes me think I have anything to contribute? Isn’t writing somehow self-indulgent? Shouldn’t I be out there in the world, at every possible waking moment, making some sort of real difference?

After reading her post, which was entitled "On Doing What We Can" by the way, I thought to myself:

"Hugh, I guess I'm not the only one."

Even though the 20th Century Christian bodhisattva Mother Teresa reminded us:

Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love, I struggle at times in my spiritual journey to walk the fine line between humility vs. complacency, acceptance vs. helplessness.

This feeling came to a head for me on January 21, 2017, the day of the world-wide Women's March.

This march, protesting the election and exclusionist political platform of the newly inaugurated President of the United States, was so large that it is now being called the "largest protest" in history.

And I'd like to say I was there (or at least at my local state capital building) when 82 year-old feminist icon Gloria Steinem

stood before a crowd of hundreds of thousands in the nation's capital and told protestors (women, men and children) how her German friend reminded her earlier that day that: "We in Berlin know that walls don't work,"...but I wasn't. 

No, I spent most of that unusually warm and sunny winter day at the local library and playground with my 2 gorgeous children before visiting with my aging mother; sadly, on that particular day, my spiritual life felt very small.

It didn't help that I read this other statement by my hero Ms. Steinem in the L.A. Times:

Pressing send does not allow us to empathize with other people. ... If you hold a baby you’re flooded with empathy. If you see somebody in an accident you want to help them. I love books, but [empathy] doesn’t happen from a book. It doesn’t happen from a screen. It only happens when we’re together.

This wise testimonial reminded me of the famous quotation by German anti-Nazi theologian and pastor Friedrich Niemöller (1892 – 1984) who said:

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Socialist. Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Trade Unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

Since that day I've been trying to think outside the box for ways that I may be able to connect my spiritual life and practice with something greater, and as a first step, ironically, I'm trying to think small- as in, achievable now.

For example, when I went on my first 5-day silent Mindfulness Meditation Retreat I remember being moved by this instruction on the very first page of the orientation manual for the retreat:

It's a little bit small and hard to read, but what it says at the bottom of the page is: May your practice benefit all.

To me, this is a beautiful intention.

If we choose to, we could offer our meditation practice (yoga practice, prayer practice) as a radical gesture of peace, hope and loving generosity.

In his 2002 book One Dharma: The Emerging Western Buddhism, Buddhist teacher, author and cofounder of the Insight Meditation Society Joseph Goldstein writes in his chapter on "Compassion:"

Our dharma practice cannot help but benefit the world.  As our minds become purified of those forces that create suffering, the habits of greed and hatred and ignorance, the world is that much freer of the many consequences of those mind states.

Reading these words lightens my unease about my "small" spiritual life in order to remind myself of its mighty value.

But then, in the same paragraph, Mr. Goldstein goes on:

But what would it take to go from the understanding that our practice will inevitably help others to making the welfare of others the very motivation to practice? Knowing our own limitations, can we realistically put this altruistic motivation right at the beginning? And what would be the effect of doing so?

And just like that, my unease returns.

But maybe that is okay.  And maybe it is not unease, but rather a tension inside of me that is actually a spiritual growing pain for the potential of a larger spiritual life that I have yet to imagine.

Could this be?

We will find out...

Ego And Emptiness

I have always felt that the ego has gotten an over-all bad rap in both religion and spirituality.

(Imprific.com)

This feeling probably started nearly 20 years ago when I attended my first AL-ANON meeting (which ironically became very helpful to me), and I heard another group member disdainfully define ego as an acronym: Easing-God-Out. 

In other words, god=good and ego=bad.

This protective feeling toward ego then grew further when I went to graduate school in clinical social work and I learned about all of the amazing functions of a healthy psychological ego like sense of self and adaptive defense mechanisms.

It seemed to me that the ego was the psychological equivalent of the liver to the body.  The liver being a not-so-pretty, rather humble organ that amazingly has the ability to run through roughly 500 functions including the detoxification of all of the less-than-nutritious food/drink that we consume all day long.

Similarly, it has been my ego, like the hard-working, under-appreciated liver, that I could thank for getting me from Point A to Point B each and every day; it was my ego that kept my life in some sort of organized chaos.

Take these past 2 weeks for example.

First, my mother-in-law (who graciously offers childcare to my daughter) went in and out of the hospital over several days, and then my husband had surgery.  Keep in mind that in addition to this: my husband and I both work full-time, we have two young children, my father-in-law has early on-set Alzheimer's, I am the primary caretaker for my aging mother, and my 3 year-old is learning potty-training painfully slowly (i.e. a lot of loads of laundry lately).

You can just imagine the near full lobotomy of our home and work schedule these additional medical crises required that would have put any Microsoft Outlook Scheduler to shame.

And I have to say, I believe it was my good 'ol hard working ego that kept me in some sort of sanity in order to remember which direction to drive in to pick up my children somewhere near the actual pick-up time.

So when I read words like below from the late, great Irish poet, philosopher, theologian John O'Donohue in his book (which I adore) Anam Cara I feel deeply perplexed and confused.

One of the greatest enemies of spiritual belonging is the ego. The ego does not reflect the real shape of one's individuality. The ego is the false self born out of fear and defensiveness. The ego is a protective crust that we draw around our affections. It is created out of timidity, the failure to trust the Other and to respect or own Otherness.  One of the greatest conflicts in life is the conflict between the ego and the soul.

Add to this perplexity and confusion more books of a Buddhist slant that talk about "death of the ego," "transcending the ego," and Sufi sayings like: "Die before you die, and you shall never die," I ultimately ended up, shamefully, skipping over the "emptiness" chapters. 

This has not been an act of disrespect to any of the traditions,  I just didn't know what to make of the apparent contradictory feelings inside of me.

But lately, I've had a series of experiences that have opened up what feels like a dialectical possibility to hold both: Ego And Emptiness.

One experience came from a surprising source which was the book first published in 1970: Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind: Informal Talks on Zen Meditation and Practice by Shunryu Suzuki.

I say surprising because one might think that such a classic, in the Zen tradition no less, would surly prompt a more rigid stance, not a more flexible one. Yet, here we are.

And in the chapter entitled: Emptiness, Shunryu Suzuki wrote:

If you are concentrated on your breathing you will forget yourself, and if you forget yourself you will be concentrated on your breathing. I do not know which is first.  So actually there is no need to try too hard to be concentrated on your breathing. Just do as much as you can. If you continue this practice, eventually you will experience the true existence which comes from emptiness.

Something about the way this was written unlocked some small piece of insight inside of me.

I understood it to mean that ego is not to be judged as bad or wrong, or even something to pursue or not pursue per se.  But rather a structure that exists...until it doesn't- a time when it might not be needed as much anymore.  Like a snake skin that will naturally fall off on it's own when the time comes.  No effort required.

Strangely, the few experiences I have had of this understanding of ego and emptiness have been when running on the treadmill.

It is not every time, and certainly not for the whole time, but every so often I will come to a point in my run (and to be clear, these are short- I'm no marathoner) when my attention feels utterly in sync with my body breathing, and it feels like a very rhythmic cadence is moving in time with my feet as they hit the floor of the machine. 

I believe some people might call this experience "flow." However, I prefer to think of it as emptiness, which to me feels like the sensation of freedom or liberation. 

And the thing is, for me, ego is not outside of this sensation.  Rather, it is dissolved into it, into infinity.

It feels similar to how I've heard Buddhist teacher, author and co-founder of The Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts Sharon Salzberg describe spaciousness, as she does below in her article Facets Of Metta posted on www.vipassana.com:

Imagine taking a very small glass of water and putting into it a teaspoon of salt. Because of the small size of the container, the teaspoon of salt is going to have a big impact upon the water. However, if you approach a much larger body of water, such as a lake, and put into it that same teaspoonful of salt, it will not have the same intensity of impact, because of the vastness and openness of the vessel receiving it. Even when the salt remains the same, the spaciousness of the vessel receiving it changes everything.

We spend a lot of our lives looking for a feeling of safety or protection; we try to alter the amount of salt that comes our way. Ironically, the salt is the very thing that we cannot do anything about, as life changes and offers us repeated ups and downs. Our true work is to create a container so immense that any amount of salt, even a truckload, can come into it without affecting our capacity to receive it. No situation, even an extreme one, then can mandate a particular reaction.

Ms. Salzberg's metaphor has deep resonance because it allows me to continue to offer gratitude to my diligent and conscientious ego that keeps me above water in my day-to-day reality of coordinating a pill box for my elderly mother and remembering my 3rd Monday of the month staff meeting with my supervisor, AND, at the same time, it allows my mindfulness meditation practices to keep my teeny tiny ego in check within a vast awareness far beyond my comprehension.

What about you? How do you hold both ego and emptiness? Are they mutually exclusive to you?

Wholesome & Unwholesome Habits

I have come down with a new addiction, and I must say, it's not good.

It starts at 5:30 in the morning and can go until 9:30 at night before I go to bed.  It is happening multiple times a day, and I can't seem to stop it. 

I do it at home, in my car, at work, and it never seems I can get enough.

The weird thing is, I know it's not good for me.

Like, I will be doing it and think to myself "You need to stop this behavior!"  But then, I don't stop.  I just keep doing it, but just feel really bad about doing it.

I don't think I'm the only one though.  I hear there are others just like me who have fallen into the trap of compulsive news watching of the current tragic-comedy of U.S. National Politics.

One such person might be Western Buddhist teacher and author Sylvia Boorstein because she mentioned in one of her January, 2017 podcasts on Dharmaseed.com that she had "taken a vow to turn off cable news."

I was recently (shamefully) telling someone about this new addiction of mine, and the person tried to validate me (maybe because he too  has the same new addiction) by saying, "Yeah, but it's like watching a train wreck in slow motion. You want to turn away because you can see how awful it is and how much carnage there will be, but then you just can't take your eyes off of it."

Maybe.

I've also tried to rationalize that news watching is the behavior of an engaged citizen in a healthy democracy.  But that was until I saw this Tweet by someone named Ben Greenman that is now in circulation:


I made a flowchart of everything we know so far.

Okay, so maybe that argument doesn't really hold up right now.

What I could probably could say however, and this might actually be true, is that turning on the news right now seems to very temporarily relieve a growing sense of apprehension and powerlessness.

I want to know what is happening in US politics, right now, in order to decrease my feelings of apprehension and powerlessness.

I want to know: Who is resigning? What is the new executive order? Who's being nominated? Who's being confirmed? Who's being sued? Who's being deported?

Somehow I've gotten it into my distorted head (see again Ben Greenman's picture in Tweet above) that the compulsive news watching will meet this need.

Because in reality we all know, like any good "fix," the second after I saturate my appetite, the discomfort to get another "hit" begins again- sometimes even harder than the first time.

Yet, here's the even bigger irony: because of all these hours of news watching that I'm doing to relieve a feeling of apprehension and powerlessness, I have decreased my meditation practice to all but a single breath- typically done while hyperventilating.

Okay, I know, it doesn't make any sense, but alas, this is where I am.

So, what is a yogi to do?

Step One: Admit to myself that I am powerless over news watching and my life has become unmanageable.

Step Two: Come to believe that a power greater than myself can restore me to sanity.

And for me, that has been a meditation practice.

I am more sane when I meditate regularly.

Or, as Ms. Boorstein said in paraphrasing the words of the Buddha in the same January podcasts on Dharmaseed.com: "When my mind is relaxed and clear, my heart is open and generous."

My experience in the last six years tells me that when I meditate regularly (cause), I feel less depleted, less irritable, less bitter, less argumentative, less anxious (effect). 

However, when I compulsively watch CNN and CNN.com (cause), I feel more depleted, more irritable, more bitter, more argumentative, and more anxious (effect).

In this case, 1 + 1 does = 2.

In Western Buddhist teacher and author Joseph Goldstein's piece entitled "The Science and Art of Meditation" in the 1999 anthology called Voices of Insight, he reminds us that a meditation practice can help us see that in choosing a behavior

the criterion is not whether something makes us feel good or not, but what factors in the mind are being cultivated.  If they are the wholesome, skillful factors, they lead to genuine happiness and peace.  If they are unwholesome, even if we feel good in the moment, they will be the cause of future suffering.  So we need wisdom and understanding that our actions are going to have consequences. We want to be making the right choices.

Today, I am going to make an effort to increase behaviors that my own experience tells me will yield more genuine happiness and peace and decrease behaviors that are, at present, not nourishing or wholesome (i.e. the news on US politics).

What behaviors will you choose today?

Waking Up: Poison as Medicine

When I was 11 years-old, my 6^th grade teacher, Miss Lewis, decided to teach our class about democracy. 
 

It was June, the end of the school year, a time when any teacher could have easily decided to coast on autopilot till the last day of school- especially during Social Studies.
 

But that year, Miss Lewis chose not to.
 

No, she decided to educate our class about democracy by bringing our attention to the most current event of that time: The Tiananmen Square Massacre of 1989 in which hundreds of student demonstrators and civilians were killed by the Chinese military.
 

For those of you who don’t know (or don’t remember), in the spring of 1989 there was a period of student-led protests in Beijing, China to call for greater democracy including freedom of speech and freedom of the press. 
 

At its peak, it is estimated up to a million young men and women gathered together in Tiananmen Square while thousands of others protested in 400 other cities nation-wide using non-violent techniques-- including hunger-strikes--to communicate their outrage.
 

I can’t tell you how much this one Social Studies lesson changed me.
 

And I mean that almost literally. 
 

As in, I don’t completely know or understand how this one single event got so deeply under my skin so as to rearrange the furniture of my mind- to borrow a phrase from Joanna Macy.  I just know that it did.
 

For some folks of my generation, the event they most remember is the 1986 Space Shuttle Challenger explosion that was largely viewed live on the television.
 

But not me.
 

Learning about The Tiananmen Square Massacre awoke something inside of me that felt like it was always there, and I began to make connections.
 

Fast forward five more years.

I am now 16 years-old, it is 1994, and I am on a school trip to visit the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C. The museum officially opened just one year before under President Clinton, and I have my first experience in the Shoe Room.

For those of you who have never been to the U.S. Holocaust Museum, there is an exhibit that displays 4000 shoes  in the museum that actually belonged to the murdered women, men and children of the Nazi concentration camps of World War II, and the experience of seeing piles of these extremely personal belongings is visceral (oh, yes! there is a smell!)  and overwhelming- as it should be.

Looking back, I remember silently walking through the room with all my senses alert and flooded with unfiltered human reality, while a lump sat hard in the back of  my throat. I remember thinking without remission: "I don't understand how this could happen...How could human beings do this to other human beings?...How could children be murdered?...This was just decades ago when my own father was already in this world?"
 

Fast forward 3 more years.

I am now 19 years-old, it is 1997, and I am sitting in an African American History class as an undergraduate.
 

My professor is an elderly Jewish man barely taller than I (I am only 5 feet) who has taught at the college for decades.  He matter-of-factly tells our class that by learning African American history, we are actually learning a more accurate, whole history of the United States; he said the historical view from the "bottom" is a fuller picture than the view from the "top."
 

It is.
 

I learn for the first time about the devastating 1896 United States Supreme Court decision called Plessy vs. Fergusen; a criminal legal decision that legitimized "separate but equal," or what became known as Jim Crow, for the next 70 years. 
 

I learn how 9 white male Supreme Court judges constitutionally disenfranchised African Americans politically, economically and socially.  I learn how this one court case was so powerful, it successfully un-did 3 decades of progressive post-Civil War, post-slavery reconstruction. 
 

I also begin to make connections between my own personal experiences and this court decision.

Like Charlotte weaving her spider web,  this eye-opening class was a catalyst for a whirlwind of insights and understandings of reality that had previously been blind to me regarding the historical context for the housing projects just miles from where I lived; for my mother's friends' families who were part of the Great Migration of millions of African Americans from the southern states to the northern cities who were trying to escape lynching, the poverty and the terrorism of the KKK; for how the de facto segregated school systems of the north, that I was educated in, were created.

In other words, I began to see with much greater clarity how we were still marred by this single court decision over 100 years later.  You could argue: I was waking up.

And it continues to this day.

For me, President Trump’s recent executive order to stop all refugee programs from war-torn Syria and “temporarily” restrict all travel from 7 predominantly Muslim countries was another such "wake-up call" that was exacerbated (or maybe punctuated) by reporting by The New York Times on 1/30/17 that a January, 2017 Quinnipiac Poll found 48 percent of Americans support the new policy.

What?!I  thought. How could this be?!
 

It seems so strange to me that these events, like the alarming 1960's television images of the civilian war carnage in the Vietnam War and the police dogs and water hoses being used against protesting African Americans were for my parents' generation--arguably some of the darkest low-points in the last 100 years of our human history--were my "coming of age moments" in my journey of awakening.

I'm incredulous that it is the ugly of the ugly that wakes me up...

On the other hand, Buddhist thinkers and writers might say, Of course! That's how it works.

In Pema Chodron's1997 book When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times she wrote:

We can use difficult situations--poison--as fuel for waking up...Everything that occurs is not only usable and workable but is actually the path itself. We can use everything that happens to us as the means for waking up. We can use everything that occurs--whether it's our conflicting emotions and thoughts or our seemingly outer situation--to show us where we are asleep and how we can wake up completely, utterly, without reservations...Use poison as medicine to use difficult situations to awaken our genuine caring for other people who, just like us, often find themselves in pain.
 

Poison as medicine?

Suffering  and awareness of suffering as part of the path to enlightenment or what is more commonly called: wisdom?

I suppose this way of understanding the path of awakening is present from the very beginning of the legend of the Buddha when the young prince Siddhārtha Gautama, the man who would become known as the first Buddha, left his protected palace gates for the first time and witnessed the reality of human suffering in the form of an old person, a sick person and a dead body, and this experience became his first hard-core wake-up call.
Yet, I have to wonder, how many more "wake-up calls" will we need--like the indefinite ban on Syrian refugees--before our society as a whole can evolve into an enlightened future where we live the values of a spiritual democracy? 

In the meantime, it appears anyway, there will be plenty of opportunity (aka poison) for you and me to use for our own awakenings in the next four years.

May our practice benefit all others.

Poetry 109: Will I Rise

Will I Rise

When rage merges 

with heartbreak,

separation feels imminent. 

When me and mine,

greed and fear,

guide my leaders

and my neighbors,

sorrow feels inevitable. 

When day after day

there are more endings 

than beginnings,

destruction than

creation,

despair feels obvious. 

When tear drops

sting the backs of my eyes

with each new reckoning 

of hate and exclusion,

helplessness feels overwhelming. 

When waking up alone

feels terrifying and fruitless,

resignation feels almost possible. 

When curling up in a ball-

afraid to open my senses

to a brave new world

I do not understand-

feels more than tempting,

I ask myself:

Will I rise?

Will I pound my feet 

forward toward 

a freedomland 

I know exists.

Will I sit proud and tall

each daybreak

to allow for one, small,

moment of peace

on my very own  

living room carpet?

Will I sing

and dance

and shout

and march,

and be as nasty as I am

because that is 

more than enough?

I ask myself:

will I rise?

-Me