A Retreat with Lama Surya Das Part I: Arriving

At a time when more and more of us are ever more hostage to our beeping phones and our blinking machines--our agendas, in short, and the chatter and clutter of the world--a monastery represents a new kind of liberation. It fills up the spaces that information can't touch, and it speak to those parts of us that feel we cannot engage with the surfaces of the world until we have built a solid foundation from which to put those surfaces in place.

-Pico Iyer

As I carried my luggage from the parking lot into the monastery turned Garrison Institute in Garrison, New York, and then up to my second floor shared room, I was deeply reminded of the writing and speaking of Pico Iyer.

Though admittedly a bit of a fan, what I have appreciated most about this British-born Indian man who now primarily lives in Japan and made his early career off of international travel writing, is his ability to so beautifully articulate our periodic need to go inward.

On his website, picoiyerjourneys.com, he even has two different side-by-side tabs titled "outerworld" and "innerworld" right next to his "welcome," which to me demonstrates the equal value he places on both.

I share this need to go inward as well.

And I also have some people in my life, as Pico Iyer has also written about, who don't entirely "get" why an ordinary suburban working mom like me would voluntarily go into silence to spend 8 days in a non-air conditioned old monastery without access to electronics, and then spend her long days engaging in various contemplative practices from 6 in the morning until 9:30 at night.

(I even had some people offer a judgey kind of response to this retreat, sending a little mom-shame in my direction because I would not be taking my 5 year-old daughter and 10 year-old son along for the ride.)

But mostly it is more of what Mr. Iyer wrote in a 2006 article titled "The Secret Journey," about his decision to retreat to a Catholic monastery on the California coastline a few times a year:

My friends, a little concerned about my defection--how could I be turning my back on them, and on the smiling self who's telling them wild stories of North Korea and Tibet and Bolivia?--find ways to tidy up my betrayal, and say (I'm sure), 'He's gone off to find himself. He needs time to rest. He travels so much, the poor thing is in desperate need of peace and quiet. He's just taking a break...He just needs to unplug...'

What I don't tell them is that I don't go there just to catch my breath, to be away from the phone, to breathe in one of the most beautiful stretches of coastline in the world.  I go there to become another self, the self that we all are if only we choose to unpack ourselves and leave ourselves at home.

Yes. 

Though not an experienced practitioner of contemplative retreats by any means, and yet having done a few, there is deep resonance in that last line in particular: I go there to become another self, the self that we all are if only we choose to unpack ourselves and leave ourselves at home. 

Specifically in this last retreat, which was my first with Lama Surya Das who is a Western Buddhist teacher and writer of the Tibetan lineage, I absolutely did peel away multiple layers of self (or ego) over the course of the 8 days; or perhaps I should say, multiple layers of self were peeled away from me? 

(More on that later though...)

For now, I'll just say, as I was arriving on that first day of a retreat titled: "The Natural Great Awakening: Dzogchen Center's Summer Meditation Retreat," I fairly immediately began to allow all those outer labels, that efficiently and objectively describe "me" but for certain do not define Me, to fall away which for some, including myself, can feel like a form of liberation.

Or as Mr. Iyer wrote in the same 2006 article:

I won't necessarily call this a pilgrimage, because, as [Thomas] Merton says, I'm not off to find myself; only to lose it.

I'm not off in search of anything; only--the words soon become fanciful--in pursuit of the state that is beyond searching, of being found...

You could say it's not a pilgrimage, because there's no movement involved after I step out of my car...But all the movements and journeys I have taken around the world are underwritten, at heart, by this: this is who I am when nobody is looking. This is who I'm not, because the petty, struggling, ambitious 'I' is gone. I am as still, as timeless as the plate of sea below me.

And it is all metaphor of course.

So even as I sit here writing, finding words to describe something probably not meant to be written about, and I prepare to move into the rest of my very day-to-day routines of commuting to work, seeing clients, bathing children, watering vegetables, and making lunches, I try to allow that "who I am when nobody is looking" to come forward and perhaps be with me, at least a little, as I move through my day.

Perhaps you can too.

May it be so.

Poetry 158: You Don't Have to Slay the Dragon

You Don't Have to Slay the Dragon

(In dedication, reverence and gratitude to Lama Surya Das)

I've descended down
to where the blue
dragon flies hover,
the forest deer
take their morning
sip, and
the trout gather in a
sea they forget is there.

I've come to release
my Protector;
the oh-so-loyal
guardian who has
served me so well.

Without her,
I would not have been
able to clean house
of that which
harmed me, and would
continue to,
if not for her joyous effort.

I'll admit, she does
seem somewhat reluctant
to let me go;
sweetly reminding me
of the way my favorite
Jewish auntie mothered
me in a way I didn't
know existed.

Don't let go too soon.
Don't let go too late.
Good advice I think.

But now,
the time has come.

So let me take  your
faithful body
in my lotus hands,
and most lovingly
express all the gratitude
that one can expess
for life itself.

Then, I will lay you down,
and re-ascend into the living
world, all the while,
carrying your lessons
and love in my pocket,
as I walk and breathe
in a life closer
to my own.

May peace be in your
heart dear Protector.
Know, thanks to you,
I have more
peace in mine.

With all my
love and blessings.

-Me

Poetry 157: Parenthood

Parenthood

 

I see my young
walking barefoot in the
grass.

Pulling blueberries off

the bushes out back.
Looking for already
ripened tomatoes.

In these moments

I feel that invisible,
yet fantastically tangible,
cord between us
pull tighter.

 

I know this time
is brief,
when the borders
of our suburban half
acre will keep you in.

I know the goal

is to help you grow
in skill and wisdom
before you move out
into wider circles.

 

Yet my mammal
instinct seems
so damned hardwired
to just pick you up
by the scruff,
and carry you back
through time.

 

I don’t-

of course.

Instead, I decide

to let my animal self
sit just quietly
in the shadows of
our shaded lawn.
Carefully watching
your every step.

 

Preparing to
let you go.

 

-Me

Current Events & Vacillating Emotions

It would be very fair to describe my temperament as mercurial.

In fact, I once described it to a therapist as analogous to a singer who has an incredibly broad vocal range- like baritone all the way to soprano.

But never before has that been truer than in the first two years of the presidency of the 45^th President of the United States.

Take the vacillation of emotions in this week of current events alone.

Monday morning, I woke up and turned on the news to see the horrific image of the lifeless bodies of two Central American migrants, Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez and his 23-month-old daughter Valeria, who had died over the weekend while trying to cross the Rio Grande into the US, leading to this New York Times cover story:

Then, Tuesday morning, I woke up and turned on the news to see yet another woman has come forward (this is now the 16^th!) and reported the current President sexually assaulted her (in this case the victim reported rape) in the mid-1990’s, and this was the Washington Post’s headline on June 25, 2019:

“Latest sexual assault allegation against Trump draws muted political reaction.”

Irate.

Despair.

Breathe.

But then…Hope. 

Thursday evening, my friend texted me this image of a cross walk next to a town park with her words “A little bit of light in the dark” underneath:

Which was then followed by learning that the Supreme Court decided this week, in a close 5-4 vote, that every human being “counts” in the United States, and  therefore, when the population of the United States if formally counted again in the 2020 Census as required by the Constitution of the US,  every human being in the US will be “counted,” regardless of citizenship status, by not adding the question about citizenship to the questionnaire.

Phew! What an f-ing roller coaster of emotion this week!

I recently heard an interview on NPR with the founder of StoryCorps, Dave Isay, about a new project they are working on called: “Stonewall OutLoud.”

The StoryCorps website describes the project as:

our national effort to preserve and celebrate the voices of LGBTQ elders

as the 50^th Anniversary of the Stonewall Riots (a poignant moment in the LGBTQ Rights Movement) is commemorated in the US.

And in sharing about this special project with NPR, Mr. Isay chose to quote a small section from Dr. Maya Angelou’s poem “On the Pulse of the Morning” read at the 1993 Inauguration of the 42^nd President of the United States, Bill Clinton.

History, despite its wrenching pain,
Cannot be unlived, and if faced
With courage, need not be lived again.

That just covers it all, doesn’t it?

Irate, despair, hope…

(And for the full poem, On the Pulse of the Morning, see below.)

Perhaps this is how it is right now- and I don’t just mean in my own neurotic head.

Perhaps, these are the times we are living in, or maybe we always were…I’m not sure.

I guess as long as I choose awareness as my preferred state of being, I’ll just have to get more used to using my broad emotional range to hold the vastness of human experience, from heartbreak and suffering to victory and triumph.

(I’ll also take breaks as necessary, and I hope you do as well.)

May it be so.

On The Pulse Of Morning

A Rock, A River, A Tree
Hosts to species long since departed,
Marked the mastodon.

The dinosaur, who left dry tokens
Of their sojourn here
On our planet floor,
Any broad alarm of their hastening doom
Is lost in the gloom of dust and ages.

But today, the Rock cries out to us, clearly, forcefully,
Come, you may stand upon my
Back and face your distant destiny,
But seek no haven in my shadow.

I will give you no hiding place down here.

You, created only a little lower than
The angels, have crouched too long in
The bruising darkness,
Have lain too long
Face down in ignorance.

Your mouths spilling words
Armed for slaughter.

The Rock cries out to us today, you may stand upon me,
But do not hide your face.

Across the wall of the world,
A River sings a beautiful song,
It says come rest here by my side.

Each of you a bordered country,
Delicate and strangely made proud,
Yet thrusting perpetually under siege.

Your armed struggles for profit
Have left collars of waste upon
My shore, currents of debris upon my breast.

Yet, today I call you to my riverside,
If you will study war no more. Come,

Clad in peace and I will sing the songs
The Creator gave to me when I and the
Tree and the rock were one.

Before cynicism was a bloody sear across your
Brow and when you yet knew you still
Knew nothing.

The River sang and sings on.

There is a true yearning to respond to
The singing River and the wise Rock.

So say the Asian, the Hispanic, the Jew
The African, the Native American, the Sioux,
The Catholic, the Muslim, the French, the Greek
The Irish, the Rabbi, the Priest, the Sheikh,
The Gay, the Straight, the Preacher,
The privileged, the homeless, the Teacher.
They all hear
The speaking of the Tree.

They hear the first and last of every Tree
Speak to humankind today. Come to me, here beside the River.

Plant yourself beside the River.

Each of you, descendant of some passed
On traveller, has been paid for.

You, who gave me my first name, you
Pawnee, Apache, Seneca, you
Cherokee Nation, who rested with me, then
Forced on bloody feet, left me to the employment of
Other seekers--desperate for gain,
Starving for gold.

You, the Turk, the Arab, the Swede, the German, the Eskimo, the Scot ...
You the Ashanti, the Yoruba, the Kru, bought
Sold, stolen, arriving on a nightmare
Praying for a dream.

Here, root yourselves beside me.

I am that Tree planted by the River,
Which will not be moved.

I, the Rock, I the River, I the Tree
I am yours--your Passages have been paid.

Lift up your faces, you have a piercing need
For this bright morning dawning for you.

History, despite its wrenching pain,
Cannot be unlived, but if faced
With courage, need not be lived again.

Lift up your eyes upon
This day breaking for you.

Give birth again
To the dream.

Women, children, men,
Take it into the palms of your hands.

Mold it into the shape of your most
Private need. Sculpt it into
The image of your most public self.
Lift up your hearts
Each new hour holds new chances
For new beginnings.

Do not be wedded forever
To fear, yoked eternally
To brutishness.

The horizon leans forward,
Offering you space to place new steps of change.
Here, on the pulse of this fine day
You may have the courage
To look up and out and upon me, the
Rock, the River, the Tree, your country.

No less to Midas than the mendicant.

No less to you now than the mastodon then.

Here on the pulse of this new day
You may have the grace to look up and out
And into your sister's eyes, and into
Your brother's face, your country
And say simply
Very simply
With hope
Good morning.