bodhicitta:
the aspiration to awaken, to truly be of benefit to others.
the way to harmonize a broken heart.
may I be in touch with the truth of my own suffering,
examine deeply my values,
hold myself accountable for my stupidity,
work my edges
and aim for a direct, non-dual experience,
to see things
as
they
are.
how? asking myself,
ending endless rumination:
what’s actually here?
the answers are in front of me.
the morning
tea table
bubbling kettle
incense awaiting ignition
legs sore, long hike
birds singing
mercifully damp air
belly growling
no future
no past
just this
What’s actually here for you, today, right now? Comments are wide open for this post; it will be instructive to hear from you.
And from
this week, shifting us back to our senses when we forget:“When the mind is turbulent, it becomes easy to drop logical and sensible thinking. Your anxiety and stress can create elaborate fictions in your mind. A strong emotion can attach itself to any little piece of information and build a wild story around it.
“The mind is quick to rely on imagination to keep the heavy reaction going. Fear and its manifestations push us to overanalyze and place us in unhealthy mental loops that increase our tension. This is common in all human beings. It is a pattern reinforced by our need to evade potential dangers, but if it goes unchecked, it can also burden the mind and create behavioral complexes that make life more difficult.
“Recognizing what it feels like when you’re out of balance can help you cut the loop. Awareness is the light that helps break unconscious habit patterns. Similarly, training the mind to become comfortable in the present moment will help you have the strength to pull yourself out of imaginary negativity. You must get comfortable with turning your attention inward if you want to start living in a new way. When you become familiar with your own ups and downs, it will be easier to see when you are causing yourself misery.”
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Lastly, from this month’s Newsletter, an invitation for you nurses, medical doctors, healers, hospitalists in need of support. Turn to Upaya for Being With Dying and G.R.A.C.E., programs to support your self-stewardship. We need you to feel resourced and harmonized so you can continue to serve.
Photo with instructors Elena Brower, Wendy Dainin Lau, MD and Clayton Dalton, MD by Shannon Ryan, Upaya Zen Center.
Sitting with a group of medical doctors and clinicians this weekend, honored to facilitate movement for their Inner Practice of Medicine work with Dr. Wendy Dainin Lau at Upaya Zen Center, I'm bearing witness to wise hope.
Educated to ignore their somatic and affective experience in favor of their intellect, these doctors are spending precious hours with the teachers recalling their intention, refining their attention, welcoming themselves back to their bodies, fortified and ready to presence what inevitably arises in their work going forward.
As systems recalibrate, a sense of inexplicable harmony emerges within each heart, in our shared space. Rather than any sort of ideal or destination, harmony seems to be a state of being in which comfort and discomfort can co-exist. And harmony might also be a practice, one of releasing our striving/numbing cycles to reveal a sense of deep safety within.
May we keep asking ourselves where harmony might be evidenced in our bodies, in our systems.
Two final insights, from two wise women in the training:
”Everything you are, and everything you've learned, comes together as a gift to someone else.”
-Dr. Mary
“Thank you. I am not alone.”
-Dr. Cheryl
What is here for me today…
Grief : my beloved mother- in-law passed away two days ago
Pain : from the intense whole-body crying
Love : for all that she meant to me and all that she taught me
Gratitude : for the timeliness of the Nurture studies
Relief : allowing myself to simply float on the waves of what is
This read reminded me of one of my most favorite Mary Oliver poems:
The Uses of Sorrow | Mary Oliver
(In my sleep I dreamed this poem)
Someone I loved once gave me
a box full of darkness.
It took me years to understand
that this, too, was a gift.
Thank you for your wise words. I enjoy reading them so much.