Mamasattva

love, work, and legos

The other day, Little Boy said, "It's not that I love you, mama, but I do like you."

He stated this in a very matter-of-fact way, a little while after a squabble and the passion had died down.

After the initial ouch, I got to thinking. What I'm glad I realized is: it's actually not his job to love me.

It's my job to love him.

I say I'm glad because I can see how much suffering it could lead to if I did all this expecting a "love paycheck." Mothering is a job, it is work. It is also a relationship and a beautiful gift, but for sure it is work. Work for which I consciously volunteered.

So I reflect on how to love him. Which means figuring out, in each moment, how Little Boy is going to feel loved.  Noticing when my idea of love is different from his idea,  being with any suffering that might arise in that instance. Remembering the Heart's intention.

Ok, I'm not going to give him everything he wants whenever he wants it and I'm not saying it doesn't hurt when, in the heat of the moment, he blurts out, "I HATE you, mama!" But I vow to practice being the Bigger Container and starting where he is, not where I think he should be.

A recent example is when he shows me his latest Lego project.

In very_great_detail.

I notice my resistance and assess the situation. If there's no chance of burning something on the stove, I step away from what I'm doing and breathe, recalling my intention. I kneel down and look at his face.

"This is the hatch, see? This is where the commander sits, actually he stands but in battle, he...."

I notice my thoughts: BORED! Sick of Legos! I'm such a mean mama! Want to get back to my "real" work!

And I breathe, see there is room for everything: all my discomfort, my intention to love, and Little Boy's desire for connection. I try to soften and expand, notice how my knees feel on the ground, the shine of his hair.

I hope this makes him feel loved. I really don't know for sure.

What  I do know : when I can practice this kind of mindful effort, I often come away with the sense of a job well done. 

giving up

I haven't blogged in a while mostly because I've been dealing with a lot of anxiety, mostly around my health. I've dealt with hypochondria off and on for much of my life, so this particular flavor of anxiety is familiar. But it has been acute recently, at times to the point of despair.

Some things have definitely helped:

• I started seeing a very kind mindfulness-based therapist. We always end with meditation, a lovely thing.
• I've quit (mostly) searching symptoms online. The Internet to the hypochondriac is like crack to the junkie. Just say no, or at least really try to.
• Ok, but I do look at resources for people with anxiety, because knowing I'm not alone and knowing most of my symptoms are classic anxiety can be comforting and empowering.
• Added a bit more time and intensity to my workouts. For someone who not long ago was training for triathlons, doing bitty 20 min walks most days as I have lately is just not cutting it.

Truly, though, what has really helped: surrender.

Hypochondria and anxiety is all about fear and fear is all about the future. When I give up the future and come back to now, over and over, I find that, over and over right now is actually ok. Right now is 100% better than what I fear the future will be. Then there's relief and, when I'm willing to surrender my agenda and pay attention, the next appropriate response makes itself known.

Instead of envisioning illness, painful treatments, and a funeral, I can hear Little Boy humming happily as he builds a Lego spaceship. I can see the sunlight on Little Girl's hair as she curls up on the sofa with a book.

My teacher suggested I study "Don't Know" Mind. And, instead of imposing my will on Life, let Life rise up each moment to show me the next right thing to do. Loosening an imaginary grip on something that never has been in my control.

Have you seen "Finding Nemo"? There's a scene where two fish are trapped inside a whale, clinging to the whale's baleen as the whale's head rises. They have to let go to fall deeper into the whale so they can be blown through the blowhole to freedom. But they don't know this will happen, they just know they have to let go.

Surrender, freedom, inhale, exhale, arising, falling away, over and over...

 

actual life

This morning I took a tour of Little Girl's school as part of the process of enrolling Little Boy for kindergarten. In one of the classrooms, the kids recited a verse that began,

"Look to this day, for it is life."

Guess who started crying.

Even now, as I write it, I choke up. Because lately I've been thinking about how *this* day is my actual life.

So much of my life can have a quality of waiting, waiting for ________ to happen so that I can finally be happy/peaceful/alive. And waiting feels like sleeping, checking out. Meanwhile time marches on and, ok, the truth is, I get closer to death.

When I lived at Zen Center, I'd read the painted message on the back of the han (a wooden board struck by a mallet to signal zazen). "Don't waste this life!" is the admonition, and at the time, I had some lofty feeling attached to it.

But now, with kiddoes who are changing every day, embodying relentless impermanence, I see how fast it really all goes. That feeling about the fleetingness of life is less lofty. It is heavy with bittersweet and it is in my face daily.

So I don't want to miss a moment. How I live my days is how I'm living my life. And how I live my moments is how I live my days.  What does this moment ask for? What is the appropriate response, how can I respond with whole-hearted attention?

First, I have to know where I am. I can dream and dream about future scenarios while going through the daily motions like a zombie. Today, though, I look up, noting the color of the walls or the sky, sensing the touch of my feet on floor. I hear the wind and an airplane and the dog's soft snore in the hallway.  Pause and notice what is right now, even as I move through the to-do's.

I watch my hands, wonder at the light brown of Little Girl's eyes (so light!), notice my mind making up a conversation I may never have, then breathe out softness and drop my shoulders.

I'm experimenting. What if, instead of waiting or dreaming, I arrive to each moment as if arriving home, as if I'm returning, flopping onto a familiar old couch with a sigh?

Maybe every moment could be home no matter where I am.

mama's always onstage

It's good to be reminded of my intentions. Right now, those reminders often come from small people.

Yesterday it was not from one of my small people, but a friend of Little Boy's. She was in the car when I forgot myself and, in a moment of reaction, spanked Little Boy.

We were in front of their preschool, and after I spanked him, I scooted his friend ahead of us into the yard where, apparently, she promptly told the teacher what I'd just done.

Ugh.

To be clear: I don't believe in spanking kids. But I'm sad to admit I have defaulted to it on rare occasions. I always feel crappy afterwards.

I chatted with their teacher, and though she was compassionate about it, I felt twice as crappy than if I'd spanked him and no one else saw.  Which even at that moment I knew was a gift. The gift of community and interconnectedness.

I'm sure you've heard that saying, "dance like no one is watching." As I got into my car after saying good-bye to Little Boy, it occurred to me to "parent like someone is watching."

Maybe even "parent like EVERYONE is watching."

At first blush, that may seem kind of paranoid or at least, in the parlance of pop psychology, co-dependent. But to me, it means I have faith in community.

When Husband and I got married, we announced it to everyone we knew. We had a ceremony, invited many loved ones. My teacher helped me see that, beyond having a fun party, by taking vows in front of a bunch of people, we were asking them to help us stay true to those vows, to our big love intentions which are really manifestations of our best selves. We were asking them to be our witnesses not just that day but from then on.

In Buddhist teaching, the Sangha (spiritual community) is 1/3 of the Triple Treasure in which practitioners vow to take refuge. That means it's a safe place.

For me, sangha is the perfect safe place to see (and feel) the crap that happens when ideas about the way things (little boys) should be are held too tight. It is the perfect, messy, crowded safe place to get my missteps and delusions reflected right back at me (if I take the time to notice) and to be re-minded over and over of the Open Heart's inmost requests.

 

skillz

I'm reluctant to talk about the "fruits" of practice. I worry that I (and anyone else reading this) might get caught by expectations of practice as "self-improvement."

Yet I'm aware that something inside really does change over time and with effort. I've heard Zen teachers describe meditation practice as "training," which to me means developing a skill, not necessarily "making me better."

So I am comfortable saying that today my skill at letting things go is better than it was before I started meditating.

Case in point: the reality show-type confrontation I had with a neighbor recently.

Details aren't important, enough to say that it was nighttime, we were on the sidewalk, and the neighbor was yelling at me for reasons I still find confusing.

Back inside my house, I had a head full of all kinds of crazy: re-playing the confrontation, imagining myriad "alternative endings," envisioning the neighbor's "inevitable revenge" (flaming bags of dog poop on my porch!). Anger, fear, confusion seizing up my neck, shoulders, and belly.

At first, in an attempt to push suffering away, I actually tried sending good thoughts to my neighbor.

But nope, wasn't time for that, not yet. It was time for noticing and breathing and noticing.

When the body settled somewhat, it was actually time for tonglen, for thinking of all the other people in the world who had just been yelled at by their neighbor (because on a planet of 7 billion, I couldn't be alone in this) and taking in their (and my) suffering with an in-breath. Sending spaciousness with the out-breath. In. Out. In. Out.

Now, back in the day, I would've been obsessed with the situation. Obsessed for days on end.

But within about 24 hours, most of the energy around the episode had dissipated. 24 hours of noticing crazy come and go, remembering to tonglen on it and to pay attention to the life that was actually in front of me each moment. Surprisingly, even sincere thoughts of well-wishes for my neighbor spontaneously bubbled up on their own!

My little mind couldn't have made that happen. My little mind be loving drama.

But the Open Heart (which I believe we all *are*) is big enough for everything, big enough for "drama" to pass easily through.

a body in flux

 

After I birthed Little Boy at home, I remember telling my Zen teacher that I hope I have a similar experience when the time comes for me to die.

Because although at the very beginning of labor, I was there "doing it," sometime during that sweet, hard-working night, something flipped. The "I" stepped aside and there was just laboring, just breathing and resting, just opening and pushing. It was simultaneously dreamy and clear and clean, meaning there was nothing extra.

Recently, in practice discussion with my teacher, I described my current struggle with what I've come to realize is perimenopause. As I ticked off the symptoms and my feelings about it, my teacher chimed in,

"Whose body is it?"

Boom.                                         

In labor, there was just life laboring. And now, in perimenopause, there is just life: being nauseated and jittery, irritable and fatigued. The whole universe, right now, coming together in this particular configuration just happens to be "estrogen in flux." The "I" tries to grip slippery ideas of what things were like before all this. Grasping is "extra," and the practice is now to notice this extra without judgment and allow it to fall away.

That said, in the same way I prepared for labor by arranging comforts and support, I am seeking ways to alleviate the harder parts of this "puberty-in-reverse." Seeing through with compassion. Meditation, a simpler schedule, acupuncture, and yes, Big Pharma, if things get really wiley.

"Whose body is it?"

Slowing down enough to see that it is and is not my body, slowing down enough to be curious about changes that are inevitable, watching the "me" come in and out of the equation.

After some moments of sitting together, my teacher lowered another boom, a boom both familiar and new like everything else about Zen to me:

"Feel the spaciousness? That's who we really are."

 

 

the best way to defeat an enemy

 

In the car the other day, Little Girl piped up.

"The best way to defeat an enemy is to make him your friend."

She learned it from a show about Lego Ninja characters. Her timing was perfect.

Because lately I've been trying to defeat one of my oldest nemeses.

Since childhood, I've dealt on and off with anxiety and panic. For some reason, in the last couple weeks, panic keeps attacking, in sudden surges.

The actual attack itself is awful but often short-lived, thanks to meditation practice which anchors me with a return to the breath. 

The real enemy, though, is my usual response in the aftermath: shame.

Shame that there is something wrong with me, that I'm not normal, that after all these years, I am still 100% crazy. Studied further, I see it is shame that I am actually human.

So when these attacks happen, I tend to keep it mostly to myself because if I mention it to friends, (I think) it will confirm that I am alone in my crazy. Then I just feel lonely, anyway.

The best way to defeat an enemy is to make him your friend.

So today, in meditation, I try just noticing the shame. Just let it be there, let it be what it is. I'm not going to offer it tea and a chair, but I'll give it room, watch it change, inhale and exhale. It goes and returns, but with breath I see there is space around it.

The space is soft and shaky and feels a little like love, my eyes fill (that ocean of tears my teacher told me about years & years ago). Again, what I think is a "shame blanket" dissolves and there it is: the quivering, tender, open space that I somehow know every being has.

Or is.

Maybe the *real* best way to defeat an enemy is to sit still long enough to see there are no enemies or friends, just false ideas about a "me" over here and a "you" over there, about "crazy" and "normal," ideas that come and go (if I let them) as naturally as ocean waves.

 

inside job

Years ago, when we lived across the street from the Zen Center, I did as many meditation retreats as I could. 

Almost every time the retreat ended, I would pick a huge fight with Husband.

"I can't believe you just got out of sesshin!" he would cry. I couldn't believe it, either. What the heck happened to all that hard-earned equanimity?

Still, for years I've trudged along, stumbling and breathing best I could back to the present moment.

It has only *just* occurred to me what's been happening.

I've mistaken meditation practice for self-help.

I've come from the idea that an outside thing will fix an inside thing. So I put my time in the zendo, on my cushions at home, reading dharma, noticing what I can throughout the day. Then, with the occasional and inevitable times I really lose it with the Littles and/or Husband, along with the remorse and sadness is frustration that mindfulness isn't working.

What is really not working is trying to change something I can't accept.

Pena Chodron puts it like this:

I’ve known many people who have spent years...pursuing spiritual teachers and different styles of meditation, all in the name of taking care of themselves. Then something bad happens to them and all those years don’t seem to have added up to the inner strength and kindness for themselves that they need to relate with what’s happening...

When taking care of ourselves is all about me, it never gets at the unshakable tenderness and confidence that we’ll need when everything falls apart. When we start to develop maitri for ourselves, unconditional acceptance of ourselves, then we’re really taking care of ourselves in a way that pays off. We feel more at home with our own bodies and minds and more at home in the world.

Something in the way I relate to life has changed with Zen training. I generally feel less ruled by anxiety, there is more room in my heart.

But there's also an expectation: all this work should finally eliminate the habits I hate about myself. An expectation I prove wrong, repeatedly.

What if I try to just notice that expectation? Just let it be there, with as much tenderness as possible, give it space to come and go.

Maybe then the focus can shift from "making me better" to opening the heart ever more, making room for everything and every being, including this one that still wants finally to be perfect.

 

why bother

 

(Ruud Vuijusters)

Sometimes I feel like I have nothing good to say or nothing new to offer. Who reads these posts anyway? Am I making any kind of difference at all?

I sit with the heft of discouragement, breathe with the perceived weight of "Why bother?"

Inhale, exhale, soften, allow.

In that bit of space, a memory of my very first meditation period bubbles up.

I only signed up for it as a cheap, safe respite from a very, very bad relationship. A friend told me about "some Buddhist farm in Marin." I booked a few days for semi-retreat: I'd get a beautiful, quiet room and delicious vegetarian meals in return for participating in morning meditation and working on the farm for half the day (plus a small fee).

"How hard can this be?" I thought as I walked the path to the meditation hall before dawn.

As soon as I sat down, I found out...with a vengeance.

It was like someone suddenly hit the crazy button. From start to finish, I was on full-speed anxiety attack. Sweat, palpitations, hyperventilation. In part because I don't like to get "in trouble," I stayed on my cushion (but barely).

On each side of me, in the darkness, were sitters, obviously residents (experts!), with shaved heads and robes, still and silent. Despite the mania of my thoughts, I could sense them there and I remember leaning on them (in my mind) to keep from descending into utter crazy. I imagined they were human trees to which I'd tethered myself.

So I think of these two faceless sitters when I wonder whether I'm helping anyone.  They were just doing the practice. Their showing up to meditation that morning was part of the thin mental lifeline that kept me on my seat, that helped me back onto the seat for the next 40-minute meditation period, that began my practice which continues 13 years later.

These two had no idea how much their efforts helped me and I was too shy at the time to find them after to thank them.  

But what I *can* do today, with a grateful heart, is keep going. Keep trying to sit and write and be here in each moment.

I can simply notice the idea of "Why bother?" and bother anyway, for the benefit of beings whom I may never know.  

 

one with everything (whether we like it or not)

Often, I feel it in my body when my kids are really suffering. After 8 years of mama-ing, I've grown somewhat accustomed to it. I hurt when they hurt, simple. And by now, not a surprise.

What I didn't know in my bones is that I could feel the deep suffering of my friends so deeply in my own body...until last week when some sudden, seismic changes happened in my close circle of friends.

Aches, sleeplessness, stomach upsets -- these all would've made sense for my friends to experience, but as someone whose life at the moment is actually really good, I was caught by surprise that they were happening to me, a bystander.

With time, acupuncture, meditation, and massage, my body is much better today. What I've (re)learned: being a bystander is an illusion. That thing about "being one with everything?" It's for real. And of course with the help of some Pema Chodron wisdom, I'm reminded that it is not a bad thing. It is just life.

This kinship with the suffering of others, this inability to continue to regard it from afar, is the discovery of our soft spot, the discovery of bodhichitta. Bodhichitta ...means "noble or awakened heart." It is said to be present in all beings.

And just in case I think of congratulating myself for having such a big heart, Chodron goes on:

Because bodhichitta gives us no ground, it cuts through our concepts and ideals. We can't make it into a project of becoming a "good person" or the one you can always count on to be there. It's far more uncertain than that.

Truth is I've had fleeting thoughts of distancing myself from the drama "to take care of myself." But there will always be drama and change and anyway, it seems this wise body won't allow me to forget: we're connected. Beyond ideas of "trying to be a good friend" is this truth, this shared vulnerability.

So I practice leaning in a little, breathing in pain, breathing out relief for everyone involved (including the "bystanders").

Chodron gets the last word:

Instead of transcending the suffering of all creatures, we move toward the turbulence and doubt...At our own pace, without speed or aggression, we move down and down and down...At the bottom we discover water, the healing water of bodhichitta. Right down there in the thick of things, we discover the love that will not die.