sitting with pain

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In their MBSR Workbook, Bob Stahl and Elisha Golstein, present a very helpful how-to three step approach to working with chronic pain in meditation:

1) Investigate the pain and tension in the body:

A common knee-jerk reaction to pain is to clench and get tighter around it. Unfortunately, this can not only increase the physical pain, it may also begin a vicious cycle of reactions that lead to increased anger, fear, sadness, and confusion. Getting tight around pain further constricts the muscles and restricts blood flow, which may cause more spasms and pain, possibly even in other areas of the body. This cycle is difficult to stop, and in time you may discover that you're constricted not just around the painful area, but throughout the body.

The body scan provides an opportunity for you to reorient toward living and working with tension and pain. As you reeducate yourself about your pain by distinguishing physical sensations from mental and emotional feelings, you can learn to recognize strong sensations in the body as just physical sensations . . . 

Once you become aware of how you hold pain in the body, you can start figuring out how best to work with it . . . Mindful awareness will not only allow you to see where you're holding unnecessary tension, but will also help you soften and possibly release tension in these areas where there's no pain at all. Mindfulness also teaches you that if you can't release the tension, you can practice riding its waves, just observing them, letting them be, and allowing them to ripple wherever they need to go. 

2) Working with the emotions in physical pain:

Bringing mindful awareness to emotions allows you to begin to acknowledge them, no matter what they are, validating and acknowledging them without censorship and without resistance. As with physical pain, resistance to difficult emotions often causes more pain while learning to let be and go with them, rather than fighting them, can often diminish or change the suffering associated with them . . . 

As you gain more understanding of your physical pain, your emotional reactions to it, and the differences between them, you'll begin to see that there's a difference between physical pain and suffering. Even in times when you can't change the physical sensations of pain, you can change your emotional responses to them and thereby reduce your suffering. 

3) Living in the present moment:

When you identify with stress, tension, or chronic pain, you may think of it as a long-term problem or life sentence, and this attitude can take you out of the present moment and increase your suffering. Mindfulness teaches you to be here now. You don't know what the future may bring, and you really don't know if the stress and pain will last forever . . . 

Rather than being held hostage by your discomfort, you can cultivate the attitude that it's possible to learn from it. As you learn to let go of the past and not cling to a specific vision of the future, you'll be able to see things as they are in the moment, with a growing sense of freedom and the possibility of new options. This perspective transforms you, your pain, and your relationship to your pain.

Three proven steps that can change the way you live with your pain. Not easy, but well worth the effort. 

~ Marguerite Manteau-Rao

to be near

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It had been a good day after all.  This is what we were on the river for - to feel the power of it, to see it in action, to be near to it with as little as possible between us and it, to know it as an elemental force stripped of names and associations.  The hard work and aggravation, the unwieldy boat, stubborn as a mule, water like glue, all this was good, too.  What true understanding of the river could one acquire by a fast trip in ease and comfort?  And now, after such a day as this, it was good to be at rest, sheltered where wind and current could not reach us.

~ Harlan Hubbard

from Shantyboat Journal

edited by Don Wallis

art by the author

nets

Our love is

a sister of the light;

deftly, she unwinds

our shadowed nets.

Where they become

keening shawls

to shelter loss,

she pours oil of ease.

From underneath

she rips the knots,

the mass of algae dream

unties and drops.

And the reeds 

woven to cover

fear of the deep,

drift and slip.

Lines of empty eyes

that caught and held

everything blindly,

surge and see.

Water

urges us

to fluency.

~ John O'Donohue

from Echoes of Memory

photo from cog arts culture

listen with ease

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Have you ever sat very silently, not with your attention fixed on anything, 

not making an effort to concentrate, but with the mind very quiet, really still? 

Then you hear everything, don’t you? 

You hear the far off noises as well as those that are nearer and those that are very close by, 

the immediate sounds—which means really that you are listening to everything. 

Your mind is not confined to one narrow little channel. 

If you can listen in this way, listen with ease, without strain, 

you will find an extraordinary change taking place within you, 

a change which comes without your volition, 

without your asking; 

and in that change there is great beauty and depth of insight.

~ J. Krishnamurti

blindsight

You can't tell that Sabriye Tenberken is blind. She rides horses to crisscross Tibet's forbidding passes and plateaus. When talking, she looks you straight in the eye and describes things by their colors: the yellow mushrooms or the azure lake. And to greet a visitor, she bounds down a flight of steps in her boarding school for visually impaired children in Tibet's capital Lhasa. In the playground Tenberken points to 15-year-old Ngudup, who is playing a song for her on his guitar. "For 11 years," she says, "he was locked up in a dark room."

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Tenberken, 34, has brought light into Ngudup's life and into the lives of the other 48 children at her school. She and her staff don't just teach the kids Tibetan, Chinese and English, and practical skills like making beds and operating computers. They also give their charges dignity. Because of its high-altitude exposure to the sun, Tibet has unusually high rates of eye disease, and because of the prevalence of Buddhist beliefs, blindness is often regarded as punishment for misdeeds in a previous life. When Tenberken first went to Tibet seven years ago, she discovered that Tibetans had no idea what to do with their blind children. "It was depressing," she recalls. "We met kids who had been tied to a bed for years so that they didn't hurt themselves. Some couldn't walk, because their parents hadn't taught them."

Blind from a retinal disease by the time she was 13, Tenberken, who is German, studied for a master's degree in Tibetology at Bonn University and created Tibetan braille. She applied to various nongovernmental organizations to do fieldwork, but none would give her a job. So, along with her Dutch partner, Paul Kronenberg, 35, an engineer, Tenberken headed to Lhasa, waded through reams of red tape and was finally granted permission to open her school, raising the seed money by selling her autobiography. Says Tenberken: "We want to show the kids that they don't have to be ashamed. We want them to stand up and say, 'I am blind, not stupid!' They need to be proud of themselves, gather the strength to cope with discrimination and go out there as messengers for what they've learned."

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Tenberken's latest project is a farm some 300 kilometers from Lhasa, where blind adults are taught to raise animals and plant vegetables, and she's also establishing a center in Kerala, India, where trainees from developing countries can learn to set up similar schools. "There should be no limits for the blind," says Tenberken—clear proof that you don't need sight to have vision.

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~ Chaim Estulin and Ursula Sautter

for Timeasia

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the song of life

I have no name,

I am as the fresh breeze of the mountains.

I have no shelter;

I am as the wandering waters.

I have no sanctuary, like the dark gods;

Nor am I in the shadow of deep temples.

I have no sacred books;

Nor am I well-seasoned in tradition.

I am not in the incense

Mounting on the high altars,

Nor in the pomp of ceremonies.

I am neither in the graven image,

Nor in the rich chant of a melodious voice.

I am not bound by theories,

Nor corrupted by beliefs.

I am not held in the bondage of religions,

Nor in the pious agony of their priests.

I am not entrapped by philosophies,

Nor held in the power of their sects.

I am neither low nor high,

I am the worshipper and the worshipped.

I am free.

My song is the song of the river

Calling for the open seas,

Wandering, wandering,

I am Life.

I have no name,

I am as the fresh breeze of the mountains.

~ J. Krishnamurti

photo of a pulsar

belief - an escape

You believe in God, and another does not believe in God, 

so your beliefs separate you from each other. 

Belief throughout the world is organized as Hinduism, Buddhism, or Christianity, 

and so it divides man from man. We are confused, and we think that 

through belief we shall clear the confusion; that is, belief is superimposed on the confusion, 

and we hope that confusion will thereby be cleared away. 

But belief is merely an escape from the fact of confusion; 

it does not help us to face and to understand the fact 

but to run away from the confusion in which we are. 

To understand the confusion, belief is not necessary, 

and belief only acts as a screen between ourselves and our problems. 

So, religion, which is organized belief, becomes a means of escape 

from what is, from the fact of confusion. 

The man who believes in God, the man who believes in the hereafter, 

or who has any other form of belief, is escaping from the fact of what he is. 

Do you not know those who believe in God, 

who do puja, who repeat certain chants and words, 

and who in their daily life are dominating, cruel, ambitious, cheating, dishonest? 

Shall they find God? Are they really seeking God? 

Is God to be found through repetition of words, through belief? 

But such people believe in God, they worship God, 

they go to the temple every day, 

they do everything to avoid the fact of what they are - 

and such people you consider respectable because they are yourself.

~ J. Krishnamurti

from The Book of Life

with thanks to j krishnamurti online

art by Michelangelo

an undeniable love

Anna reading at Payne Hollow

An undeniable love for the river drew us away from town and down to the shore; the boat we built there was to carry us into a new existence. This regeneration gave a direction to our lives that Anna had never before contemplated; for me it was the fulfillment of old longings; yet we were both led on by a common desire to get down to earth and to express ourselves by creating a setting for our life together which would be in harmony with the landscape.

We catch fish for our own eating, get all our living as direct means as possible, that we may be self-sufficient and avoid contributing to the ruthless mechanical system that is destroying the earth. 

In this endeavor, no sacrifice is called for, no struggle or effort of will. Such a way is natural. Rather than hardship, it brings peace and inner rewards beyond measure.

Thus shantyboating has become, for us, a point of view, a way of looking at the world and at life. You take neither of them too seriously, nor do you try to understand their complexities. Who can? It is an obviously illogical philosophy, in which the individual is supreme. The claims made on him by his inner beliefs are above the demands of society. He is not without compassion, but his love is expended on those of his fellow men he is in contact with. With no schemes for universal betterment, he tends his own garden.

Is this selfish? No. The selfish man wants more than his share, a higher seat at the table than he is entitled to. One strong enough to stand by himself is not attracted by the prizes which the world offers. He has his own values, receives other rewards, for which there is no competition.

Instead of trying to make everyone alike, the state and society should encourage individualism. Individuals will never be too numerous; in fact, they are becoming harder to find. The river shantyboater has passed away, along with the old river; yet a few renegades will always be found, out in the brush somewhere, or on a forgotten bit of river shore, content with an environment the proud would scorn. The shantyboat strain is not likely to be cultivated out of existence, any more than the earth will ever be completely subdued.

~ Harlan Hubbard

excerpts from Payne Hollow: Life on the Fringe of Society

a shantyboat in winter - by Harlan Hubbard

I sit content

I exist as I am, that is enough,
If no other in the world be aware I sit content,
And if each and all be aware I sit content.
One world is aware, and by the far the largest to me, and that is myself,
And whether I come to my own today or in ten thousand or ten million years,
I can cheerfully take it now, or with equal cheerfulness, I can wait.

 

 

 

~ Walt Whitman

Walt's 200th birthday this year

 

 

mercy

The quality of mercy is not strained;
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath: it is twice blest,—
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes:
‘Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes
The thronèd monarch better than his crown:
His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;
But mercy is above this sceptred sway,—
It is enthronèd in the hearts of kings,
It is an attribute to God himself;
And earthly power doth then show likest God’s,
When mercy seasons justice. 

~ William Shakespeare 

 from The Merchant of Venice

art by Van Gogh


 

the power of low position

Rivers and seas are rulers

of the streams of hundreds of valleys

because of the power of their low position.

If you want to be the ruler of people,

you must speak to them like you are their servant.

If you want to lead other people,

you must put their interest ahead of your own.

The people will not feel burdened,

if a wise person is in a position of power.

The people will not feel like they are being manipulated,

if a wise person is in front as their leader.

The whole world will ask for her guidance,

and will never get tired of her.

Because she does not like to compete,

no one can compete with the things she accomplishes.

~ Lao Tzu

from The Tao Te Ching

translation by j.h. mcdonald

the prodigal son

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It would be difficult to persuade me that the story of the Prodigal Son is not the legend of a man who didn't want to be loved.. When he was a child, everyone in the house loved him.  He grew up not knowing it could be any other way and got used to their tenderness, when he was a child.

But as a boy he tried to lay aside these habits.  He wouldn't have been able to say it, but when he spent the whole day roaming around outside and didn't even want to have the dogs with him, it was because they too loved him; because in their eyes he could see observation and sympathy, expectation, concern; because in their presence too he couldn't do anything without giving pleasure or pain.  But what he wanted in those days was that profound indifference of heart which sometimes, early in the morning, in the field, seized him with such purity that he had to start running, in order to have no time or breath to be more than a weightless moment in which the morning becomes conscious of itself.

The secret of that life of his which had never yet come into being, spread out before him.  Involuntarily he left the footpath and went running across the fields, with outstretched arms, as if in this wide reach he would be able to master several directions at once.  And then he flung himself down behind some bush and didn't matter to anyone.  He peeled himself a willow flute, threw a pebble at some animal, he leaned over and forced a beetle to turnaround:  none of this became fate, and the sky passed over him as over nature.  Finally afternoon came with all its inspirations; you could become a buccaneer on the isle of Tortuga, and there was no obligation to be that; you could besiege Campeche, take Vera Cruz by storm; you could be a whole army or an officer on horseback or a ship on the ocean:  according to the way you felt.  If you thought of kneeling, right away you were Deodatus of Gozon and had slain the dragon and understood that this heroism was pure arrogance, without an obedient heart.  For you didn't spare yourself anything that belonged to the game.  But no matter how many scenes arose in your imagination, in between them there was always enough time to be nothing but a bird, you didn't even know what kind.  Though afterward, you had to go home.

...


Once you walked in to its full smell, most matters were already decided.  A few details might still be changed; but on the whole you were already the person they thought you were; the person for whom they had long ago fashioned a life, out of his small past and their own desires; the creature belonging to them all, who stood day and night under the influence of their love, between their hope and their mistrust, before their approval or their blame.


It is useless for such a person to walk up the front steps with infinite caution.  They will all be in the living room, and as soon as the door opens they will all look his way.  He remains in the dark, wants to wait for their questions.  But then comes the worst.  They take him by the hands, lead him over to the table, and all of them, as many as are there, gather inquisitively in front of the lamp.  They have the best of it; they stay in the shadows, and on him alone falls, along with the light, all the shame of having a face.

Can he stay and conform to this lying life of approximations which they have assigned to him, and come to resemble them all in every feature of his face?  Can he divide himself between the delicate truthfulness of his will and the coarse deceit which corrupts it in his own eyes?  Can he give up becoming what might hurt those of his family who have nothing left but a weak heart?


No, he will go away.  For example, while they are all busy setting out on his birthday table those badly guessed presents which, once again, are supposed to make up for everything.  He will go away for ever.  Not until long afterward would he realize how thoroughly he had decided never to love, in order not to put anyone in the terrible position of being loved.  He remembered this years later and, like other good intentions, it too had proved impossible.  For he had loved again and again in his solitude, each time squandering his whole nature and in unspeakable fear for the freedom of the other person.  Slowly he learned to let the rays of his emotion shine through into the beloved object, instead of consuming the emotion in her.  And he was pampered by the joy of recognizing, through the more and more transparent form of the beloved, the expanses that she opened to his infinite desire for possession.





~ Rainer Maria Rilke
excerpt from The Prodigal Son
from the Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge
art by andy warhol

the inner law

He whose law is within himself

Walks in hiddenness.

His acts are not influenced

By approval or disapproval.

He whose law is outside himself

Directs his will to what is 

Beyond his control

And seeks

To extend his power

Over objects.

He who walks in hiddenness

Has light to guide him

In all his acts.

He who seeks to extend his control

Is nothing but an operator.

While he thinks he is 

Surpassing others,

Others see him merely

Straining, stretching,

To stand on tiptoe.

When he tries to extend his power

Over objects,

Those objects gain control

Of him.

He who is controlled by objects

Loses possession of his inner self:

If he no longer values himself,

How can he value others?

If he no longer values others,

He is abandoned.

He has nothing left!

There is no deadlier weapon than the will!

The sharpest sword

Is not equal to it!

There is no robber so dangerous

As Nature (Yang and Yin).

Yet it is not nature

That does the damage:

It is man's own will!

~ Chuang Tzu

translation by Thomas Merton

the pools

(March 27, 1917 - June 15, 2011)

Let's picture if we can two landscapes. The first has a deep clear quiet pool, and the second also has a deep clear quiet pool. The first one is surrounded by garbage. The second one, also surrounded by garbage, has an odd characteristic - everyone who jumps into the pool takes a little pile of garbage in with him -- and there is something in the pool that eats it up, so it remains quiet and clear.

Which kind of practice are you doing ? Most of us long for deep, blissful sitting and, even if our pool of peace is ringed around with garbage, we attempt not notice it; if the garbage can disturb us, we want to ignore it. We don't like difficulties; we prefer to sit in our peace and not be intruded upon. That's one type of sitting.

The other kind of pool eats up the garbage; as fast as it appears, it is consumed as the person entering the pool carries it in with him. Still in a short time the pool is clear and undisturbed. It may churn more at first. The major difference is that the first pool ends up with more and more garbage around it; the second has none or very little.

As has been said, most of us long for the first kind of practice (life). But the second, facing life as it is, is more genuine; we keep churning up our drama -- seeing it, experiencing it, swallowing it -- throwing the garbage into ourselves, the deep pool that we are.

A practice exclusively devoted to concentration (shutting out all but the object of concentration) is the first pool. Very peaceful, very seductive. But when you climb out of the pool, the garbage of life remains -- our dualistic dealings with our work and relationships. You haven't handled them. Or you may resort to the well-intentioned but inaccurate devices of positive thinking or affirmations; the gas in the garbage increases and in time explodes.

The second pool (being each moment of life, pleasant or unpleasant) is at times a slow and frustrating practice, but in the long run, fruitful and satisfying. With all that as a background, let's look at what can be called the turning point in our life and practice. From what are we turning? Let's look at some sentences: "I feel irritated. I feel annoyed. I feel happy." What we omit is: "I feel I am hurt by you. I feel I have been made happy by you."

Actually, the fact is not that you irritate me, it's that i have a desire to be irritated. You may loudly protest, "oh, never, I certainly don't want to feel irritated or hurt..." Well, just for a few years (intelligently, in the second pool). The first and uncomfortable years of sitting make it clearer and clearer that my desire is to be irritated or angry (separate). That's almost all I have known as a means to preserve and protect what I think is my identity. With continued awareness, it dawns that there is only one person who can irritate me or make me feel lonely and depressed, and it is myself -- myself as a false identity.

We begin to see a strange and lethal truth: contrary to our beliefs, our basic drive and all our life fore goes into a struggle to perpetuate our separateness, our touchiness, or self-righteousness.

Lao Tzu said, "He who feels punctured, must be a balloon.", the balloon of irritability, anger, self-centered opinions. If we can be punctured (hurt), we can be sure we are still a balloon. We want to be a balloon; otherwise we could not be punctured. But our greatest desire is to keep the balloon inflated. After all, it's me!

So what would turning be? What is the turning point? It begins when we observe and feel our anger, our manipulation, our anxiety - and know in our hearts a deep determination to be in another mode.

Than the real transformation can begin. Instead of ignoring garbage, pushing it away, or wallowing in it, we take our garbage into ourselves and let it digest. We take ourselves with us into the pool of life. This begins the turning. After it, life is never the same.

The turning is at first feeble and intermittent. Over time, it becomes stronger and more insistent (in Christian terms, the 'hound of haven' chases us). As it strengthens, more and more we know who our Master is. Of course, the Master is not a thing or a person but our awakening knowledge of Who We Are. The difficult years of practice (and life) come before the turning. The patience and skill of both teacher and student are called on to the utmost. Some but not all will make it through the difficulties.

Gurdjieff said: man is a machine. We know how machines work: when the blender's button is pushed, it goes WHOOSSSH; when we turn our car's ignition key, the motor roars. Man is a machine. Why? As long as a man's primary drive is to keep his balloon unpunctured, to avoid having his buttons pushed, he is an automatic machine which has no choice.

Even moving from passive dependence to an active and angry independence -- "Don't tell me what to do!" -- is still the activity of a machine with buttons. I feel ruled and compelled by 'something else'; I have no choice. Like the blender, if pushed, I turn on.

Suppose you do something to me that I view as punishing (it's mean, it's unfair, I don't deserve it). How do I react when this button is pushed? With anger? (And I may not reveal my anger, or I may turn it against myself). Then I am a machine. In this instance, what would the tuning point be?

The turning point is my ability, developed slowly by practice, to be aware of the thoughts and bodily sensations which comprise anger. In the observing of thoughts and sensations, anger will swallow itself and its energy can open life instead of destroying it. Then I (the angry one) can act out of this clarity in a manner that benefits me and you. This is the way of the second pool, the one that takes the garbage, digests it, letting it feed and renew life as compost does a garden.

Let us not have some naive notion that this ability is won overnight. A lifetime is more like it. Nevertheless, faithful and determined practice makes a difference and fairly soon at that.

We come to view the unpleasant aspects of life as learning opportunities. If my balloon is deflated a little -- great!. As an opportunity to be welcomed, not avoided or dramatized. each round of such practice renders us a little less machine-like, gives us more appreciation of ourselves and others.

Let's live in the second pool.

~ Charlotte Joko Beck

from the Newsletter of the Zen Center of San Diego, (Feb-Mar, 1989)

for citizenship

In these times when anger

Is turned into anxiety

And someone has stolen

The horizons and mountains,

Our small emperors on parade

Never expect our indifference

To disturb their nakedness.

They keep their heads down

And their eyes gleam with reflection

From aluminum economic ground,

The media wraps everything

In a cellophane of sound,

And the ghost surface of the virtual

Overlays the breathing earth.

The industry of distraction 

Makes us forget

That we live in a universe.

We have become converts 

To the religion of stress

And its deity of progress;

That we may have courage 

To turn aside from it all

And come to kneel down before the poor,

To discover what we must do,

How to turn anxiety

Back into anger,

How to find our way home.

~ John O'Donohue

from To Bless the Space Between Us
photo by Robert Frank