Wise Heart Way

Principle #17: Be mindful of intention. Intention is the seed that creates our future.

Practice: Meeting Difficulty with Wise Intention

Homage to the Toe River Train

This year, we arrived at the Blue Ridge cabin in deepest summer. The sunshiny, glossy greenness and lushness, the piercing light is indescribable, and, because we’re perched beneath a mountain road, there is a sense of drowning in the color green. The last visit was early October: Yellow and scarlet leaves crunched beneath our feet. I remember feeling old, like I was dying. It was as if some essential piece of me was shriveling and deteriorating and I could do nothing to stop it. This year, again, I transformed into an odd, silent creature. But this time I wasn’t dying; I was being altered. Under the Tulip tree, I sat astonished by the sheer weight of my grasping. Every few hours, the little Toe River train whistled by, slinging itself around the river’s curves, screeching through the thick foliage. When I sat meditation, I imagined filling the coal cars with all manner of things: grief, irregular souls, unrealized hopes, fears. I listened, sometimes in the dark, as the little train dutifully rushed memories through the fireflies and, finally, into nothingness. Over the days, I grew sleepy-eyed and indolent, senses open and listening.

Releasing Grasping in the Blue Ridge

Principle #16: Pain is inevitable. Suffering is not. Suffering arises from grasping. Release grasping and be free of suffering.

Practice: Letting Go

"The End of Suffering" -- Good luck with that!

I felt myself getting all worked up recently during two separate conversations with two different friends about the same essay in the New York Times. The author wrote about a time -- two decades into her marriage -- when her husband told her, “I don’t love you anymore. I’m not sure I ever did. I’m moving out. The kids will understand. They’ll want me to be happy.”  But the piece is not about her personal pain, or about divorce (he doesn't move out) -- it's about how she didn't buy into his words and subsequent unreliable behavior, but rather cooly gave him the "distance" he needed  (for six months) while she explained to their kids, "“Daddy’s having a hard time as adults often do."

I got worked up just now as I re-read the essay several times, and even more now that I am writing about it. Why? Because (and let me steal the words she used to deflect her husband's hateful words): I don't buy it.

"How could she remain so cool?" I asked both of my friends.

One friend: "Maybe she's a Buddhist."

Me: "Yeah, maybe she's the Dalai Lama."

(I think I just scared the other friend with how upset this essay made me. I haven't heard from him since.)

I have no doubt the writer has studied Buddhism. She writes, "You see, I’d recently committed to a non-negotiable understanding with myself. I’d committed to 'The End of Suffering.' I’d finally managed to exile the voices in my head that told me my personal happiness was only as good as my outward success, rooted in things that were often outside my control. I’d seen the insanity of that equation and decided to take responsibility for my own happiness. And I mean all of it."  By writing the essay she wants to help, "People who feel scared and stuck. Who believe their temporary feelings are permanent."

awareness test