A Treasure Found at Home

saturday was an all day meeting of my shambhala buddhism class. i haven’t written about it yet because i’m honestly not really sure what to say.

we met at drala’s house since the center was busy with a weekend retreat. we shared breakfast an played with the new puppy, kiki.

we went into the other room to meditate. drala had set out a low support cushion for kiki to sit on. i was doubtful, but she plopped right down on it after going to the other room for a chew toy. she was sitting quietly, gnawing away, when the smoke from the incense floated into the stream of sunlight pouring in the window just in front of her. her ears went up and she backed into me pretty quickly. i tried to comfort her a little by putting my hand on her back, but she was really curious about the smoke and more than a little nervous. she crept up to inspect but, being smoke, there was nothing solid to inspect. she ran back to drala and started barking and growling. drala put the incense out and kiki laid down next to him and went to sleep. she slept the whole rest of the hour and a half we meditated, raising her head only when we would switch from sitting to walking to sitting.

for lunch, we went to a great little indian place in the tenderloin. it was delicious, and conveniently located for the second part of our day. after lunch we walked slowly, in silence, around the tenderloin keeping particular slogans in mind. we practiced tonglen, we joined everything with meditation, and i noticed what a different experience it was from when i lived there.

granted, i lived on the edge and would not walk alone through the areas we walked through saturday but the difference was profound. i felt much more separate from the people on the street than i remember feeling when i lived there. not that i ever felt a strong kinship with the men offering me money for sex, but at least they were acknowledging me. i had the feeling that our slow walking and silence created a bubble around us. that they knew we were there to see their pain somehow, and they were ignoring us. (except for that one woman who asked a for a pipe.)

afterwards we drove to crissy field, which was also crowded but with a very different type of energy. we looked at a display of eggs for birds and sharks and other fish in the area, we got coffee, and sat on the seawall and watched a golden retriever do his thing with a tennis ball his owner threw repeatedly into the bay.

i still feel a bit off about the visit to the tenderloin, though. i sort of wish we had done something to interact with the people we were trying to be so open to - gone to glide and served lunch or something. as it was, i feel a little like we were taking advantage of their misfortune to move ourselves just a smidgen further on our spiritual path. drala asked if i though we were hurting them at all. no, it’s not so much that, but that by saying we were being open but by standing by and observing only we weren’t helping when we had a chance to.

i’m coming to understand that i don’t believe in impartial observance when it comes to human interaction. i’m reminded of this quote from desmond tutu:

If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.
-Desmond Tutu, clergyman (b. 1931)

today is not only a full moon and the andc (the quarterly celebration of my dance community) but a handful of other religious holidays as well. the theme for this andc is beginner’s mind.

i helped design the invites. this was my favourite, but it wasn’t the one we used. i really like the spaciousness involved. i’m really trying to go into this with an open mind, a beginner’s mind, since my attachment to the community has been tenuous, at best, over the last year. it was a year ago when i started to have significant issues outside of the community which prevented my full participation. for the march 2007 andc i had agreed to share a role with someone, but it became clear that because of stress and circumstances in my paying job, i needed to stay home. i asked for help, i asked for a replacement, but didn’t get any answer except a worried note from the other person i was sharing the role with… not worried about me, worried about the role.

no one stepped up to cover for me, so i went anyhow. i hadn’t slept much in the past couple weeks and i didn’t want to be there, so when i finally ran into my counterpart and she told me she’d planed to do the whole thing alone and that she was ok with that, i left. i think i may have been there for an hour total.

the next andc i had food poisoning and left after maybe two hours. the next andc was just after the end of some pretty wildly bizzare difficulties at work. let’s just sum that up by saying that even when i wasn’t on call and up for hours dealing with that stuff, i was a wreck. the andc was crowded and the energy was more ‘frat party’ and sexual than i understood our intention to be - some guy i don’t know stuck his tongue down my throat without asking if i wanted any sort of kiss from him. come december, i felt like i was really starting to get back to normal. that andc i stayed all night, slept in the chill space, but can’t really say there was much magical about the night for me.

so, now we’re back to march and i’m back to normal. probably more normal than i’ve felt in a long time. i’m realizing some compromises i made which don’t feel good to me and i’m interested in the world again - interested in taking chances and in finding that intersection between amazing and ordinary.

i opened my book of daily buddhist reminders. today’s is from pema chödrön.

If we knew that tonight we were going to go blind, we would take a longing, last real look at every blade of grass, every cloud formation, every speck of dust, every rainbow, raindrop — everything.

this is the attitude i want for myself when i step into that church tonight, when i go to breakfast tomorrow, when i go to class after that, and when i drive to my cousins’ for easter on sunday. this weekend i will rest in the ground of gratitude. this weekend i’m going for beginner’s mind.

i’ve done a lot of crying today. not all of it’s been bad. most of it, in fact hasn’t been bad. i’m just letting go of some things i’ve been holding on to for no really good reason except habit. they are, in fact, habits i’m sure i’ll have to let go of again and again, as is the wont with habits.

i started the day reading some of point three (of mind training) and the paramita of patience. the 47 slogans of mind training are organized into seven points. slogan 13 is my favourite so far, and the one i’m currently most intimidated by.

“be grateful to everyone”

this should be of no surprise since my favourite number is 13, and the title of my blog is an allusion to shantideva’s remarks on the subject:

So like a treasure found at home,
Enriching me without fatigue,
All enemies are helpers in my bodhisattva work
And therefore they should be a joy to me.

except in my title i’m the treasure, the one to be grateful to. see, we’re like little rubies found under the couch cushion because we point out your path to enlightenment. “here,” we say as we piss you off, “here is where you could use a little improvement on that path.” it’s much easier to be on that end than to be on the end where you’re giving the gratitude.

in the early afternoon i talked to my meditation instructor. he told me things i knew but needed reminding of, which is what all of this study really feels like to me, so he must be right on target. i cried.

next went to a book club meeting where we had a difficult discussion. i didn’t cry, but my heart was pretty tender when i left. so i came home and looked for a movie to watch. usually, i do this and decide i’m not really in the mood for whatever is on. i thought i would end up reading or folding laundry.

instead, i watched ‘becoming jane’. holy cow. maybe because i’m a hopeless romantic deep under this cynical exterior, but i caught my breath when she turned around and was suddenly dancing with him. of course, i knew the end end. i just wasn’t sure how they would get there, and as with certain other stories i know very well, i hoped for a miracle. i suppose in a way i got one, jane austin wrote some amazing literature and certainly helped pave the way for women writers in this western world.  and… i cried.

i cried for jane and for me and for letting go and for doing the right thing… the really right thing for what i want and what i’m afraid i can’t live up to and i sat for 15 min and cried for at least half of it. and i felt like a fool and was glad i was sitting alone in the dark with only my cat to witness (and now, of course, i’ve written all down for you to read). i use a 15 min mp3 meditation timer which features a few seconds of silence, a gong, 15 min of silence, then three gongs and a few more seconds of silence which i use to dedicate the merit.

the next song in itunes just happens to be a well know everly brothers tune. can you guess? it’s ‘crying in the rain’.

i’m getting hit really hard with the “not good enough”s again today.

last night i had a dream that someone who didn’t like me much decided to move into the room next to mine. we were all in college living in the dorms. the room she moved into was the room i had to walk through to get out into the hall. she started crying to all our mutual friends about how horrible i was and how i kept coming into her room. they all knew the path out was through her room, but all started to lecture me on finding another way (why not go through two other people’s rooms, the long way, instead?). they were all angry that i would lock my door and not let her into my room, but she couldn’t lock me out of hers. not one of them saw that she set the situation up. that she chose to move in there, knowing that was my way out.

i woke up frustrated and angry and feeling attacked, dwelling on my continued mistrust and misunderstanding of the actions of some people irl.

then i got to work!

there is a woman here who knows nothing about her computer and she takes it out on me. when i ask her what something does, she treats me like i’m an idot. “I. Click. On. IT,” she says slowly, “Do I have to repeat myself AGAIN?” she doesn’t let me finish my questions and isn’t able to tell me what is supposed to happen when she clicks on “it”, but she wants me to fix it for her.

i know it has nothing to do with me. that she just needs someone to take it out on, but i would so much rather be out enjoying the sunshine while it lasts. and that crazy dream where everyone was angry just primed me to be really stung by her attitude.

thankfully, s reminded me that i’ve been doing a great job and the learning curve here is steep. there is so much i can do now that i didn’t know how to solve just two weeks ago.  it’s true, but i can’t help but hear that voice that always tells me i should be learning it faster! (so good for my practice!)
tonight is acupuncture and i’m going to tell her i feel really ucky and i need the magical, “i’m good enough and gosh darn it people like me!” needle.

some questions around suffering and madhyamika came up in a friend’s blog recently. i was trying to sort of explain the four possibilities of existence and knew i was missing something just a bit. i laughed out loud, at work no less, when i saw barnaby’s joke on tribe today. how appropriately timed.
Q: How many Prasangika-Madhyamikas does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

A: Four. One to screw it in, one to not screw it in, one to both screw it in and not screw it in, and one to neither screw it in nor not screw it in.

i’ve got that broken hearted feeling again. i recognize it, sort of, as very closely related to that broken heartedness i feel so much and hear so much about in shambhala. this time, it’s not so welcome and not so easy to walk around with.

work is overwhelming. house hunting… i don’t even think about it because i don’t have the time or energy and the date of dad’s visit is getting closer and closer.

what makes this broken heart so much harder than she shambhala flavour is that this one comes with longing. it comes with desire for something specific to happen, for desire for something i just don’t have anymore.

see, ‘b’ and i used to be really close. we hung out once or twice a week, watched movies, had dinner, really hung out. and when i spent time with him, even if it was just chatting while he tried to get his ‘project computer’ up and running, i could set everything down.

and, as they have a tendency to do, things change. i’ve been pissy and frustrated and i’ve been creating distance.

i no longer have a place where i can go to set things down. i feel run ragged and like everyone expects me to be perfect at… well, not at everything, but at least at something; and that something is different for everyone so i end up feeling like if i’m not being perfect i’m letting someone down.

and in the meantime, i guess i’m letting me down.

but i don’t know what to ask for. or, i don’t know who to ask it of. actually, its quite a bit of both those. and i know it boils down to me spending more time on the cusion and leaning into things and watching my shenpa and letting those stories fall away.

at the same time, i just want someone to wrap me up in a blanket and hold me.

this morning on caltrain there was another fatal collision. when we made it in to work (much more gracefully than last time), i went right to the newspaper’s website. i didn’t find any info on the accident (was it a suicide? were there cars involved?) but i did find a wonderful reminder article on compassion.

i’m feeling stretched to the limit right now, and even if my requests aren’t all coming in from dick chaney, it would be good for everyone involved if i could remember to have more compassion. ladies and gentlemen: i give you jon carroll on compassion.

happy belated shambhala day! i spent the morning at the dentist, then stopped by the center for some lunch and socializing, then headed over to the local communist cafe to log into work. i ran into two sangha memebers who hadn’t made it to the center, so with that and the red mugs my celebration continued even as i filled requests for cc.

i love how the light bends through the handle of the mug, making the guy all curvy. i also love how our brains sort stuff like that out for us. i mean, he sure didn’t look that way when i was taking the shot. i must have been compensating, or he moved into just the right spot exactly as i was pressing the button.

i have a bunch of stories from this weekend but, for whatever reason, i’m not sure how to start them.

the whole saturday night trying to be sexy thing didn’t work all that well. it was very cold and rainy and i didn’t have any tops that went well with the skirt, so i skipped that for fear of freezing my tushy off. i dressed in my red red pants and a flowy black shirt.

also due to the rain and the cold, we all opted to stay at the piano bar instead of changing venues. it’s not much of a pick up joint, so we agreed to forgo the ’someone else has to buy our drinks’ rule, as well.

it was not *completely* without drunk men trying to pick up any woman who would stand still long enough. russel came over to our table and tried very hard to impress us by giving us all new names before asking ours (i was sherry), then he bolted when buttons suggested he buy us a round of drinks. flo took one for the team by chatting up his slightly bemused, perhaps embarrased friend in hope that russel actually would come back with drinks. she cut him loose when it became obvious that wasn’t going to happen.

i may not have worn the skirt, but i made up for it later at bleu’s ex’s house party by feeding chocolate cake to a total stranger by hand. i think he might have been cute, but since the lights were down pretty low i can’t be sure exactly — plus, he looked like he was a youngin’. i left to go dance right after the cake incident, but bleu tells me it was ‘very effective’.

three hours of sleep later i got up to meet hen for meditation. not much shows off the discursivness of a girls mind better than meditation on three hours of sleep, let me tell you. there’s precident, though, from that level three weekend in 2004 and the sfsc holiday party… mmmmm, latin dancing…

oh, um, yes, meditation and discursivness:

during the dharma talk (regarding materialism) someone asked if our grasping for more and more was a result of our society/culture specifically. if we were raised in the woods with no human interaction, he wondered, would we always want a newer and a better? i’m pretty sure the answer is yes. as if in preparation for the question, i ran into a couple dogs on the way to the muni just that morning. not being participants in our culture so much, i figure they’ll work as an example. they were wandering back up the hill sort of side by side with little interest in what the other was doing. (they had one guy with two longish leashes, so they were together but had room to move.) the golden retriever had a stick in his mouth. actually, he had it sticking out like those tools parapalegics use to type. it was obviously a treasure gained on his morning walk, but the whippit didn’t seemt o care one way or another about it.

i paused as they were about to pass and they both came up for pets. i fawned over the stick and played at trying to take it away. just that seemed to change it from a stick to a Stick in the eyes of both dogs. they started vieing for who got to hold it — not fighting, but playing and jumping. i didn’t want to rile them too much, so i dropped the game and walked off. at the corner, i looked back and they were still both trying to cary the Stick home. just me ‘wanting’ it made it something valuable and desireable, even though there was no more real value to the stick than when they’d been walking up the hill with the wippit ignoring the retriever.

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there was more dancing with coffee guys this weekend. i made a stop to get some wake up chai after my three hours of pre-meditation sleep. when i walked in ’soul man’ was playing. how can you not dance to ’soul man’? so, dance i did. and dance the barista did. and we danced to the next song as he prepared my chai. he even suggested i stay for a while and dance with him. i told him i’d like to, but i had a previous engagement, so he encouraged me to return next sunday morning for dancing. i didn’t commit.

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we had our first annual member’s meeting this sunday, complete with champagne. yum. we hysterically told the story of the history of our community together in a game where every person said one word then passed the marker (in our case, a champagne bottle) to the next person for the next word. i can’t wait to see the notetaker’s notes to read the entire ’story’. we also shared with our neighbor what the community has meant to us, our challenges, inspirations, etc. i was lucky enough to be very near one of the seed idea holders, who happens to be a person i love, so it was the best of both worlds.

to complete the total fabulousness of the evening, flo and white dog both became friends. w00t! and both asked what happened next, were they really friends already, how would they know (flo the night before actually, and white dog called me to check his status today), they were so so excited.

The Way I See It #37
Embrace this right now life while it’s dripping, while the flavors are excellently woesome. Take your bites with bravery and boldness since the learning and the growing are here in these times, these exact right nows. Capture these times. Hold and kiss them because it will soon be very different.
–Jill Scott Musician.

Two sleeps untill we leave for the burn. Things are coming together for me.

I’m trying to be in the, love in the, swim in the right nowness of now. I’m always more comfortable now instead of trying to be in next week or in two days or in next month, so why continue to drift randomly? My burn is my retreat; I remove the percieved need to worry about what’s next, like this picture… going nowhere fast.

I start my new job the day after I get back, no decompression. But isn’t that the point? No Decompression. Bring Home home. Bring the feel of the burn into the mundane. Make kindness and trust and Be Here Now the norm.

We fret and plan and run around like the proverbial chickens… except our heads really *are* cut off. I’m right here, at this desk, in this apartment, listening to this music, these keyboard clicks, feeling this chill in my fingers, little pain in my neck from slouching *right now*… and where is my head?

In the dust, on the train, trying to buy a FastPass, sorting through what I have packed, in the store buying “enough” water and snacks… I’m anywhere but here and here is where I want to be.

“It’s so simple, why don’t we do it?” asks Rinpoche.

What a good question.

I was grumpy all weekend. I think it was not enough dancing, not enough Star Wars, and not enough things going *my way* damn it. In other words, just letting that shenpa wrap it’s little hook-side-out Velcro self all around me so everything stuck.

You might think that a couple days of meditation was just what I would need to drop things. I might have thought that, too, until I tried to do it. I was in such a state, though, that being at the Shambhala level brought up a lot of discomfort for me.

As meditators, we should take care of ourselves so we have the energy to do the work. Right? If we’re physically not well, our minds are more cloudy which makes them that much more difficult to wrangle. I had not taken great care of myself last week. Participating in the weekend was physically difficult for me. On top of that, I saw the whole weekend through the eyes of the new Communications Director position. What needed to be communicated which hadn’t been? (Like checking the messages on the phone — there were 6 in regard to the weekend.) Also sitting back not being part of the staff was weird and somewhat difficult for me.

Could it be I was feeling a little groundless and out of control in terms of some other life events, too? Could those feelings be compounding each other? Certainly not. /sarcasm

On Sunday we were instructed to take an aimless walk for about half an hour. Just walk and notice what we loved, what we were drawn to, when we felt revulsion; just notice. I noticed a mop with a flattened plastic handle, some interestingly placed grip strips outside a shop, a girl with blue hair and an interesting skull tattoo on her back.

And I noticed a baby bird which had fallen out of the nest. The little guy looked like the personification (birdification?) of shocked anxiety–all puffed up and trying to be invisible right there in the middle of the sidewalk.

The sky was a cacophony of bird calls as the adult birds circled overhead and tried to scare off anything that came close. They screeched and took short flights from perch to perch trying to get the best view of the lost child. Tree… wire… tree… building… wire… tree… wire… tree… building…

I took some photographs of the little puff of feathers, all the while trying to keep an eye out for signs of the nest. Stepping back into the shadow by the building, I watched as the baby tried to help himself. He was clearly not in the best of health. He was too young to fly, and too injured to walk. He would take a step and fall over rolling a bit and opening his wings to try to keep balance. Flutter to the left, flutter to the right, he drunk-stumbled a few inches at a time, rested and started again.

He was aiming for the street.

He tumbled off the curb, righted himself, and aimed for the middle of the street.

Ok, I thought, this is where I step in. I’d make a horrible nature documentary camera person. But this was San Francisco, not the wild plains of Africa, so I walked over, picked the little guy up and set him in the tree—still not having any idea where the nest was.

He fell. Ploop.

So I picked him up again and set him next to the base of the tree. He was in the shade, next to the trunk and nestled in the dirt and bits of nature. I hoped he felt safer than out in the middle of the sidewalk with no where to hide.

I watched him for a bit longer from my spot against the building. He didn’t try to flee this spot. As I stood watching, another person from the weekend came walking by. I pointed out the bird to her, we fawned over it a little, and then both walked on.

I spied a bird hospital just across the street and down a block. I headed over thinking they might be able to help. Part of me remembered I was supposed to be working on a meditation exercise, and another part of me countered with the thought that I was supposed to go where ever I was drawn, and I was currently being drawn to the bird hospital. A fantastic justification, if you ask me, but the bird hospital was closed.

On the way back to the center I passed my friend buying birdseed to try to help feed the little guy. We sprinkled it around him, but he seemed uninterested. I suspect he was too young for it in addition to being in shock from the trauma of falling out of the nest.

That evening, as we had our final discussion, the other person shared her story of the bird. She had gone back at lunch with someone who thought she knew how to help. The baby bird was already dead.

Maybe I killed it by putting it in the tree. Maybe it was that fall that caused it to die. Maybe the little fluff ball was more dead than alive when I first saw it.

Life happens without regard for me. Nature continues to do what has always been done. What makes me think I’m so special?

I just am. That bird just was. Basic Goodness is. I can just let things be without having to try to control them, and the better I learn that the less grumpy I’ll be.

I continue to consider what I should do with my life. How can I best be of service–best use the gifts I’ve been given.

I return again and again to ideas of some sort of social service. Ideas of becoming a grief counselor, participating in end of life care, or working with abused women or children. I’m not sure how to go about it, though.

It scares me. Can I hold that? Can I do it well? Is it selfish to not even try? I’m feeling a little overwhelmed by the intensity and quantity of fear and grief even in this city alone. Do I not relieve even a little only because I know I can’t possibly relieve it all?

How do I go about making this change in my life? I wonder if Naropa has an end of life program and if their program is accredited. I would love to join my Buddhist studies with this sort of care. Like the old Catholic nuns caring for the aged and orphans in their local community. Except I’d be a Buddhist nun, all dressed in vibrant saphron instead of black.

If I go the abuse counselor route, I think I’d better not wear the traditional nun’s robes. Somehow that just doesn’t feel right to me in that setting. At least, that’s not how I see myself there.

I’m tired. It’s time to do something.
I’m scared. It’s time to stay open.

The Way I See It #25
The wise healer endures the pain.
Cry. Tears bring joy.
–Erykah Badu Musician.

Besides making it painfully obvious that I spend too much money at #$s, todays blurb calls to mind a conversation I had recently with someone about tonglen.

Tonglen is a formal giving and taking Tibetan meditation practice. The basic idea is to breathe in the dark, heavy, frightening bad feelings and breathe out calm and space and ease. The first step in the practice is to connect with a sense of the infinite, so you don’t get caught up and bogged down by the black feelings. The intention is to drop the separation between you and the person (or people) you are doing the tonglen for or to drop the separation between yourself and your full range of feelings when you are doing this for yourself. Come to think of it, that’s precisely the way one drops the separation between self and other–by being open to the full range of emotions.

The more we drop the separation, the more we understand ourselves and others, the more we can give space to (and respect) what is happening for those around us. This experience of calm may get picked up by whomever we are interacting with, thereby creating a calm in that person, as well. As our mind’s reaction slows and we learn to ride it more than it rides us, the more we can let others pain flow through us and dissipate. The need to catch it, hold it, and send it back to them decreases.

As I try to explain the practice to a friend of mine who is an energetic healer, I suddenly realize how bizarre this can sound to someone who is used to protecting ’self’. Someone who takes care to create some barrier between himself and those he connects with so he won’t take on the full feeling, because the full feeling isn’t comfortable.

“I did not create the barrier correctly, and her migraine felt like a pen stabbing into my eye,” he told me.

“Yes, that’s the point! You fully understand her pain by fully experiencing the same sort of pain. In that way you can create more space for her.” I think I caught him off guard with my answer.

Weird sounding or not, this dissolution of self and other through the formal practice of tonglen will be something I continue to hold as an intention. I tried to protect myself for years and it didn’t work. I still got hurt, perhaps more than I would have if I weren’t trying to hard to keep up that barrier.

As R’s Dad says, “Playing it cool is for jerks.” Tonglen is the antidote to being a jerk.

The Way I See It #27
Do not kiss your children
so they will kiss you back
but so they will kiss their children,
and their children’s children.
–Noah benShea
Poet, philosopher and author of Jacob the Baker, Jacob’s Journey and Remember This My Children

The concept of having children has been front and center for me recently. Playing with Peanut and Flower at the retreat, hearing a teaching which advised “Don’t disturb yourself with the worry of offspring!”*, hearing of the Dalai Lama’s response when he was asked if he missed having a family (apparently he nearly fell off his seat laughing), seeing this photo of a child effected by agent orange, reading about the children killed in Florida recently, the children missing in Georgia, how much more heartache and sadness and fear is there among the billions of people on the earth who don’t make it into the papers?

How do I bring a child into all this? How do I give someone this broken, dying world?

And yet…how do I not? How do I give up on humanity? My children will be a gift to each other as much as the world is a gift to them. My responsibility isn’t just to make sure they have all they ever want, but to teach them to keep their hearts open even when it is difficult; to love those who are hurting. I want to teach them to take the mud and the muck in their lives and turn it into strength and power and beauty–to become little lotus flowers.

And how do I do that except by learning it myself first? Stay open. Look into the experiencer, the thinker, where do those thoughts and feelings come from? Dissolve to? What do I know, what do I have faith in…Answer that and let the rest go.

I was named Pema Tharpa–Pema, the Tibetan word for lotus (sometimes written Padme). When I received the name I thought it was a lot to live up to. It is, it is. At the same time it is a great reminder of the potential I have within myself, of my unique circumstances.

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*Kunga Dawa delivered this teaching originally given by Padmasambhava. Kunga was a close student of Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, and is the Kunga Dawa mentioned in the conjunction with the Sandhana of Mahamudra. Throughout the weekend, whenever Kunga quoted Trungpa Rinpoche he would speak his words in a special, funny, high pitched voice!

I was looking for quotations to use somehow as part of my diversity committee doings at Shambhala. I’m not certain yet what I want to do with them, but I made a quick little collection.

And this one really jumped out at me.

Anais Nin:
We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another; unevenly. We grow partially. We are relative. We are mature in one realm, childish in another. The past, present, and future mingle and pull us backward, forward, or fix us in the present. We are made up of layers, cells, constellations.

I have felt myself growing much in some areas lately and slowly (but very strongly) in others. It occurs to me, suddenly, the two areas, while related, are fairly different. It is growth in one area which gives me the space to grow in the other. And growth in the second gives me the strength to support the first. And I see now as I grow back into myself how far I had retreated in some areas.

Sometimes I am very much still a child. There are parts of me which are so frightened and have been hurt so many times I can only imagine what will happen when they begin to grow.

And this is what Sangha is all about. All those people all around me all the time. Some have grown so much more than I have in particular areas. And some have not. I get to be parent and child at the same time, all at once. I get to provide a safe place for others to grow just as I discover how they create a safe place for me. It is the ultimate love affair and I am blessed to be part of it.

Buddha’s teachings are so simple and straightforward. If you find them complicated, it is only because you have made them so. You may think, “I have a Ph.D. and have amassed all this knowledge, yet I still can’t figure out how to begin practicing Dharma.” The remedy is to take a good look at your own mind.

-Lama Thubten Yeshe, in “Wisdom Energy”

~~~~

This, sadly, reminds me of someone I know. While I know how difficult it is sometimes just to sit and to “take a good look at your own mind,” that is what it is all about. I have a tendency toward more study, too, I understand the draw, but I think this one is taking it too far, too soon. I’m afraid it won’t really catch.

And how much does in one lifetime? Ever? Really?

A valid question, but I think I know what the drive is, and this attempt is missing the mark by quite a bit. Though possibly coming much closer to another mark in a round-about fashion.

To borrow a phrase from another friend’s outgoing voicemail, “Good Luck!”

Last weekend at the Winter Celebration I was dancing with a friend of mine and having a conversation about my experience of Shambhala. I was thanking him for having given me a chance to grow and show up for someone(s) and how it had opened me and that had helped open the rest of my life, too. It had given me some confidence I was lacking.

He said something about my having found my home.

Now, at the time, I noticed but mostly let the comment go. See, I’ve felt home–once–as I rested my head on the shoulder of my lover while we traveled together on a train. It lasted about five minutes.

But his comment from that night stayed with me. It touched me in a profound way. The thing is, he’s right. I didn’t even notice because it happened so slowly. Last night at the RS Choir I told this story and talked about how blessed I felt and how having this home is allowing me to open up to so much else in my life. I wasn’t sure I explained it well. I’m not sure how to explain my feelings except to say I’m totally in love with this man…and his girlfriend…and the whole sangha!

I feel like a child, I’m completely overwhelmed.

Gratitude isn’t all I feel in this situation, though. Not by far. I feel intimidated by the power of it. I feel a responsibility to do whatever I can to create a home for others in my life. For everyone I know and everyone I don’t know. To create a container in the RS for anyone who needs their home that way. To uphold the container of Shambhala for those who will connect best through that route. To make my corner of the office welcoming and open. To smile at my neighbors and the MUNI/BART employees, to make eye contact with the homeless and the very wealthy. Even to find a way to somehow include Ex-Squared in all this.

And I figure that will come when I sort out how to include myself more in it, too. Thanks for the encouragement not to forget myself, S.

When I’m at an All Night Dance Celebration and someone I hardly know asks me, “So, how’s your sitting practice?” I know it’s gotten bad.

Ok, ok! Starting Monday I’ll schedule time into my day again to sit!

We got trapped on the train again today.

The doors in the second car just wouldn’t open. Some little old woman in red was having a really hard time and started in on me when I mentioned to the guy who was repeatedly pushing the call button that the doors open automatically and it’s all run by computer underground. I meant to relay that the driver wasn’t being lax in his door opening duties. It seemed to release the man’s anger, but the little old woman across the isle started talking about Unions and how she’ d worked for the Unions 50 years before I was born and someone should be working in each car and they fought against automation and she doesn’t trust computers.

And “It’s nothing to smile about!” This had never happened in the 20 years she’d been here.

~Well, It’s happened to me.

Really.

~Yes.

Was everything all right?

~Yes, everything was fine.

This is a problem.

~People make mistakes, too.

Yes, but this is a problem!

~If you make it one.

There should be someone in the car. In each car! Someone who’d know what to do in an emergency.

~Look, he’s telling her what to do. (As the driver pointed through the window to pull the big red emergency lever.)

See, I wouldn’t have known to do that, there should be someone to tell you!

I know what it feels like to panic, so I feel badly that she was having a rough time. I just couldn’t help but smile though. What else was there to do but sit and wait?

Which is exactly what I’m having to do in terms of Galahad AGAIN!!! I came home to find he’d pried open the bathroom window and run off. I just hope he avoids that garage this time.

Him being gone is a problem if I make it one.