Wise Heart Way

Principle #10: Thoughts are often one-sided and untrue. Learn to be mindful of thought instead of being lost in it.

Practice: One-Sided Thoughts

Push Hands

In TaiChi class our teacher introduced us to an excercise called push hands.  You connect your wrist to a partner's lower palm and they begin to push. To be effective you don't push back which is the natural thing to do.  In your stance your are rooted and relaxed and the incoming  push energy is received, grounded and deflected softly.  That is how in the martial art you defeat your opponent, by changing the course of that aggressive energy.  Their push energy travels into nothing and is dissipated.  It is the idea of giving up your self, and following the other, being able to read the intention of the pusher and being calm and relaxed to deal with it.  What at first might be perceived as "weakness" actually becomes the "strength". It is so hard not to push back.  Practicing with a significant other can be revealing!

The physical activity of moving around the chi is what is helping me meditate.  I read that the practice of tai chi  and moving all that energy around can bring many feelings close to the surface. It seems to be true.  If there is a story on the radio of someone's misfortune I will start to cry. I am surprised sometimes how quickly my temper flares up.   But it is so brief now;  like a firecracker,  a quick pop, over in a second, just a puff of smoke remaining. 

feelings, wo-o-o, feelings

Important chapter. If I learn nothing else, I need to learn this.

I love the acronym RAIN -- especially on this very rainy week. Recognition, Acceptance, Investigation and N--I keep forgetting what the N stands for-- Non-Identification.  That's the hardest part for me, and maybe that's why I can't even remember its name. I think that true forgiveness probably lies somewhere inside the non-identification. I am not there yet.

I'm learning so much more about recognizing feelings though. I grew up in the kind of home Kornfield  talks about -- one where emotions were both volatile and repressed. Most of my life I've thought the model I chose was volatility, and then I worked hard to tone down my emotions -- to have less of a temper, cry less easily, fall in love less easily. The big surprise of my life is to find that repression is even more operational in me--  and that even some of my strong emotional outbursts signify a disconnect from my feelings.

No Feeling is Final

I seem to say this about every chapter in this book, but I really do believe that Ch. 9, “River of Feelings,” is the most important chapter of the book for me.  As some of you know, it was brought to my attention three years ago that I had a problem with expressing my feelings (or maybe it was in feeling my feelings—who knows!).  This came as a huge shock to me.  I had thought myself fairly expressive, and receiving this information from someone I had respect for caused me a high level of discomfort because I had to re-adjust my self-image—and, my very understanding of myself.  So I’ve spent the last three years examining how I deal with feelings:   through therapy, conversation with close friends, study and meditation, and periodic challenge matches with the person who brought this to my attention.

I’m not going to say that after all the time and attention that I’ve given to this issue that I can report I am now a fully functioning feeling person.  That would be a joke!  But I am happy to report that I can read “River of Feelings” and recognize something very different about the way feelings work, for us and within us.  So in this post, I’m simply going to summarize for myself the key ideas that Kornfield addresses in this chapter.  It’s my way of integrating the ninth principle of Buddhist psychology:  “Wisdom knows what feelings are present without being lost in them.”

Bodhisattva in metro

Principle # 9: Wisdom knows what feelings are present without being lost in them.

Practice: A Meditation on Grief

it matters and doesn't matter

Haven't posted in awhile. This goes back to a previous chapter.

"From the Universal to the Personal" is a key chapter in the book for me. The whole book speaks to me and feels momentously instructive and supportive to where I am these days, but this chapter, in particular, answers the question I started with this year. How can I be more lighthearted?

I can relate to the story Kornfield tells about  the woman whose instinct for self preservation was triggered by the threat of boiling water. Maybe some people awaken to their lives gently, but some of us -- me, for example -- need louder, more  dramatic wake-up calls.

My wake-up call came when the weight of thoughts and feelings I had been avoiding hit me with full their force, all at once, overwhelming me. I can't go into the detail here, because I couldn't see the detail of it, it just felt like one big overwhelming force, as if I was  threatened by that pot of boiling water. Thank god, thank my friends, and thank my hardy immigrant heritage, but my survival mechanism, my resilience, kicked in.

Holding on to Stress

In the recent issue of Shambhala Sun, Roshi John Daido Loori says:

“None of the antidotes to stress—numbing ourselves, running away, the various therapies—will ever really get to the root of it.  We actually hold on to our stress.  It is a way of holding on to our positions, our beliefs, our sense of being right—our self.  In that tightness and rigidity, the body cannot deal with it and the mind cannot deal with it.  We suffer because we will not let go.”

Isn’t that amazing?  This is a totally new idea to me:  that we actually want our stress, and thus fiercely hold on to it.  Now, when I listen to a colleague lamenting how overworked she is, or see an acquaintance who continues to be victimized by her failures with men, or hear myself complain (yet again) about how I habitually over-pack my days, I see what Loori is saying.  These small sufferings have become who we are.  How could we possibly let them go????

Caminata Nocturna: Walking Under the Moon

Ever since I lost my brother in a terrible plane crash and my mother two full moons later, I've taken to late-night walking meditations. In Italian, these walks are known as Caminata Nocturna, or "Night Hikes" and they are mystical and beautiful experiences. I've been night-hiking now since 2004. I wait until its very dark and cool. My husband insists I take a flashlight, but I often park it behind an azalea bush and go empty handed. I head down Bryan Avenue, cross Phelps, take a sharp left on Shepherd Avenue. The third streetlight on the right begins flashing as I walk by. Always. I know its my brother signaling hello. Sometimes I stroll all the way down Bonita to Palmer Avenue and loop back on Phelps. I've made friends with an owl family in a live oak over near the lake. In the Spring, the jasmine perfumes the neighborhood. I walk and walk. I walk off my endless grief. As I approach our home, I see the welcoming lights of our clerstory windows, a row of gold squares. After a full year of these night hikes, life began to flow through my body again. I knew I would be all right. But I'll never stop walking at night and I'll never stop listening to the moon.