Thursday, October 21, 2010

Life is Suffering...

In meditation class this week we talked about suffering. What a relief it is to let go of denial, start at the beginning with your arm around your suffering. It's kind of a bad news/good news thing, so you have to stay with it through the process.

So why are you suffering right now? (Don't forget to ask with compassion.) We listened to a recording of a poem:
Rest in natural great peace this exhausted mind,
Beaten helpless by karma and neurotic thoughts
Like the relentless fury of the pounding waves
in the infinite ocean of samsara.
Rest in natural great peace.
The poem is recited by one Sogyal Rinpoche, written by Nyoshul Khen Rinpoche. The Tibetan-accented english, the gathering force of the background music, the weight of the words sinking into the open sky of mind, the poem repeatedly repeated...rest, of course we want to rest! Why can't we rest? Yes, beaten, yes neurotic, yes relentless, yes pounding. And yes, peace. We can rest. You can rest! Wanted it to keep going, wanted it to stop. It stopped.

When I looked at the cardboard cover of this little 3" cd, there are the two rinpoche (what's plural for rinpoche?? is it like fish?) laughing faces, smiling eyes, inclined toward one another. Good marketing. (I've been schooled in the devil's deals of western-style advertising). I better listen to that again, so I can have what they have, right? I say that with all sincerity. I am totally open to a revelation in whatever wrapping.

So what is my suffering right now? Summer passed. I thought often about posting but made the choice to be with the moment instead of sitting writing about it.



Now everything is still passing, again. We are here, in the school routine, my kids like the superhero you only see when he stops running, the angled light meaning the end of the gardening season--I want to be creating...what am I creating? All I'm doing is watching things pass away, and feeling sadness, feeling lost.
Diagnosis: Clearly I'm feeling a foolish attachment to the time that is forever swiftly fleeting.

Remedy: A moment in the evening to savor.


A musician (favorite song: We three kings) and a scientist (Doppler effect demonstrated in your living room), just for an hour or less on a fall evening, exploring possibilities of tone, of frequency, of being.

We ended meditation class by following our teacher in yoga nidra. I felt aware of very specific parts of me. How nice to take notice of my throat when it is healthy, and not just when it starts to hurt. How fascinating to feel a vibrating energy all up and down my shoulders, arms, fingers--almost like I could regulate involuntary bodily systems. Boy if I could the first thing I'd do would be to make my hair behave.

What if I could always remember that feeling after yoga nidra--of space when I'm compressed, of time when I'm rushed? Can I be conscious, forgiving, a witness to self, expanding? Simply and only animated earth, without expectations, only awareness. So life is suffering... and awareness can be, unexpectedly, joy. That's the good news! Hope you stayed long enough to get the good news.

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