Pause

In our family it was almost considered a sign of intelligence: the lightning-quick flare of temper, the instant reaction to a perceived slight or irritation, followed by a gush of eloquence recapitulating the offender’s past misdeeds and setting out principles of moral philosophy for her future improvement. The quick-temper gene came from my mother’s father, a usually mild-mannered man who would unpredictably erupt at minor annoyances and who passed the gift on to my mother, at whose knees I learned the art of venting wrath promptly and with panache.

I am talking here about strictly verbal expressions of anger, as at our house even the slamming of doors was forbidden. Still, anger is anger, however it is expressed, and though manifesting it feels as good as scratching a mosquito bite, to its recipient it feels like an attack by a horsefly. 

My meditation practice is outstanding in its sloppiness. I go through periods when I meditate occasionally, and periods when I meditate every day. But sloppy or rigorous, in some thirty years of sitting, the twenty minutes on my cushion have hardly changed at all. Unlike me, the monkeys in my mind have neither aged nor slowed down, but continue to leap and race through the forest of my neurons until the bell dings and the session is over. 

This so discouraged me that at one point I was ready to give up. Didn’t Einstein (or somebody) say that doing the same thing over and over in hopes of obtaining different results is the definition of insanity? But then I learned that one should not expect to enjoy the fruits of meditation while meditating. Rather, they are most likely to make themselves felt during the times when we are simply going about our daily life. If we notice that we are less quick to anger, if we pause before we jump to slap away an irritant, that is a sign that meditation is working. 

Here is what Viktor Frankl, whose wisdom was forged in the terror and suffering of Auschwitz, says about that pause: “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom” (Man’s Search for Meaning). 

That space is what I am looking for, the blessed nanosecond in which on good days the effect of my sloppy meditations comes into play, and I choose to forego belting out an angry aria in favor of a more moderate response, or simply silence. True, that tiny pause doesn’t feel nearly as good as letting fly a tirade, but at the same time I can say that, although I often regret the tirade, I have never regretted the pause. 

The pause does not feel especially difficult or unpleasant. It feels like a little nudge, something inside gently reminding me to please just wait a second before I react. But it does feel strange. It doesn’t feel quite like the real me, the me that is quick to put things into words, especially if they are angry things. 

Sometimes the urge to scratch the itch is too strong. It drowns out the soft inner voice, and I lash out in the old way. But that’s o.k., because the universe is sure to send me lots more chances to practice the pause, to dive beneath the current and sink to where there is stillness and, for this one moment, peace. 

My Friend, the Egg Timer

 In my quest to lead a responsible life, and to acquit myself of many onerous but essential tasks, the egg timer is my tool of choice. I refer to that clockwork gizmo—predictably shaped like an egg or a broody hen--that you can set for a maximum of sixty minutes (if you’re cooking an ostrich egg). It ticks loudly as its inner mechanism unwinds, and lets out an ear-splitting buzz when the time is up. 

This humble tool keeps my life on track by fooling me into thinking that it, and not I, is responsible for deciding when I can stop working on some unpleasant task. I realize that I am the one who sets the timer, but such is the mind’s capacity for self-deception that I can trick myself, when the buzzer buzzes, into believing that a higher authority—God, my mother, the German nuns who educated me—has deemed my obligation met, at least for the present, and I am free to pick up my needlepoint or watch another episode of “Call My Agent.” 

Take, for example, the task I most dislike: preparing income tax returns. Not only does it deal with boring things like forms and numbers, but it is also scary—what if I make a mistake that sets the IRS hounds on my trail? The combination of boring and scary is conducive to procrastination, guilt, anxiety, more procrastination, and the need to file for an extension.  But I am glad to report that this morning, thanks to my egg timer, I made a start on it. 

After setting the timer for sixty minutes, I assembled my files, a pad of yellow stickies, some paper clips, a black pen, a red pen, a pencil, a stapler, last year’s calendar, and a calculator.  The timer’s cheerful ticking kept me company as I sorted and compiled medical expenses, charitable contributions, 1099s, and random bits of paper, and before I knew it the buzzer buzzed. I shoved the lot into a box to await tomorrow’s session and went for a walk with my dog  Bisou, feeling like a kid let out for recess. 

House cleaning is another task I dread. The prospect of cleaning the house, or even cleaning just one room, throws me into existential despair. How will I feel, on my death bed, about the hours of my “one and precious life” I spent cleaning? Who even knows what “cleaning” means? One might begin with dusting, then press on with wiping, polishing, sweeping, vacuuming, and disinfecting, and never be heard from again. 

Again, the trick is to think “by the hour” rather than “by the job.” If it’s a dusting day, I set my timer for sixty minutes and begin. Perhaps when the timer rings I’m still in the room where I began, in which case I must have done a thorough job. But no matter how far or how well I have dusted, the egg timer has spoken, and I obey. 

On days when the sidewalks are icy, or the snow forms huge balls on Bisou’s “feathers,” I exercise her by throwing balls for her indoors, an activity that she adores. For me, despite my love for her, throwing balls the length of our cottage until she gets tired is sheer tedium. I try to focus on the moment, to take pleasure in her pleasure, to remember that this is the least I can do for a being who brings me such comfort. But the truth is, I am bored out of my mind. How long must I do this before I can in good conscience stop? 

Here again, the egg timer saves me. I set it for fifteen minutes, and then ignore it as it ticks away. Knowing that it’s in charge lets me enter into a mindless zone in which I throw the ball, praise her as she retrieves it, throw, praise, and throw again until the buzzer jolts me out of my hypnotic state. Then I put the ball away, and Bisou collapses into blissful sleep. 

I also use a timer for meditation. If I didn’t, I would be opening one eye to check the time every two minutes. But here I use the timer on my phone, which emits a bucolic cricket sound that doesn’t make me jump out of my skin. I could use the phone timer for everything else, but I am fond of the loud, companionable ticking of the analog machine. 

What about writing? Heaven knows we writers need tricks to get us going and to make the task seem less hopeless. But I don’t use a timer for writing because, when I am in full avoidance mode, even setting it for five minutes feels overwhelming. What I do instead is take a nap, one during which I may or may not sleep, but during which I allow my mind to ramble through its various wastelands. Then I get up and go to the computer, having made a solemn promise to myself that I will write a one single solitary sentence, no more. Next thing I know, I’ve written paragraphs.

But for everything else, nothing beats the egg timer.

Bisou after chasing balls

 

Meditation Aid

There is a small dog bed on the floor next to my meditation cushion, and every morning when I fold myself into a half lotus my gray cat, Telemann, jumps into the bed and regresses to earliest kittenhood. Not that there is anything kittenish about Telemann. He is in his prime, an avid (indoor) hunter, agile and well-muscled, with a tom’s wide skull and thick neck. 

The dog bed where he stages his regressions is covered in fuzzy fabric, and its back and sides are stuffed to form a softly convex wall. Telemann hops in, spreads his ten white fingers as wide as they will go, and begins to push rhythmically, first the right hand and then the left, against the side of the bed. His scimitar claws make a popping sound as they dig into and out of the cloth. His purring grows louder; the kneading speeds up; his eyes closed in ecstasy, he presses his nose and lips into the fabric. I can’t tell whether he’s actually sucking on the fuzz or whether it’s the accumulated moisture from his breath that makes his favorite spot damp and frayed. Either way, Telemann pretends he’s nursing. 

By the time the twenty minutes of observing-but-not-judging my monkey mind are up, the purring and kneading have stopped, and Telemann is fast asleep, one white paw still pressed against the curved side of the bed. Perhaps this pretend nursing is a way of making up for his deprived infancy, when his mother was so undernourished that when the family was rescued the kittens had to be bottle fed. Or perhaps the nursing is a way to soothe his anxieties, if he has any anxieties, which is doubtful. 

Whatever the reason, it doesn’t seem to embarrass this otherwise dignified cat to be seen indulging in baby behavior, and I envy Telemann his nonchalance, which we humans are taught to overcome at an early age. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if, waking up in the dark of a winter night, gasping with virus- and Trump-induced  angst, one could take comfort in a well-sucked thumb? 

Telemann doesn’t think about what I think of him. Oddly enough, when he’s settled in my arms I often stop thinking myself. He looks into my eyes, I look into his eyes, our breathing slows, our eyelids droop, and I subside into a blissful no-mind state that I hardly ever achieve on my meditation cushion.

You could tear out my fingernails one by one and you wouldn’t get me to say that I love Telemann more than my little dog, Bisou. But Bisou doesn’t induce that serene blankness in me the way he does. It may be that her face is too expressive—dogs have a special set of muscles around their eyes that gives them an almost-human repertoire of expressions—and when she looks at me I react by thinking: does she want food? Does she need to go out? Is she bored? Is she worried? 

Cats do not have those cunning little muscles around the eyes, so their faces appear somewhat mask-like to us. Looking at Telemann’s face when he’s relaxed is like gazing into a still lake, its surface broken only by his slow periodic blinks. There is no thought there, no demand, no hurry, no worry--only presence. And in response my mind slows way down, and I get a blessed respite from being human, and a fleeting taste of what it’s like to be a cat.

Rilke To The Rescue

Some days the most exciting thing that happens around here is that a chickadee takes a bath. A bathing chickadee is a cheerful sight. After checking carefully for owls and hawks, he wades into the birdbath and does a kind of shimmy, dipping his head, fluffing his feathers, slapping his wings, and sending up sprays of shiny droplets. 

Other than that, there’s not much going on, so it’s not surprising that many of us are treating this period of seclusion as a time set apart—a pause, a break during which the clock stops ticking. A time in detention, or in suspended animation, or in hibernation. A chunk of life held between parentheses that will melt away when things get better and we go back to normal.

 I remember my two pregnancies, when my entire being was focused on the resolution of that exceptional state, and daily events seemed not to matter as, like an accomplished meditator, I turned my focus over and over to the coming baby. But those two nine-month waits were joyous times, unlike the last nine months, during which I’ve often felt that, like Rosemary, the season was pregnant with the devil.

 Yet every day spent in this waiting is subtracted from the number of days that remain in my one and only passage through this world. I am like the bird that flies out of the darkness of nonbeing into a great lighted hall, and heads straight towards the window that is open to the darkness on the other side. My wings are beating faster; the window into the waiting night is getting closer; and the goings-on inside the hall grow more perilous by the moment. Will everything explode before I’ve gone?

 I’ve been waiting for the explosion since 2016. Surely, I’ve been saying along with millions of others, this cannot go on. It will not last. Things will go back to the imperfect but tolerable way they used to be. So let’s hold our breath and take a nap and think of something else. Something positive. Let us smile though our heart is breaking, because surely the sun will come out again, tomorrow.

 And then the universe, or the Goddess, or the Holy Spirit flung this at me, from Rilke:

 …How we squander our hours of pain.

How we gaze beyond them into the bitter duration

to see if they have an end. Though they are really

seasons of us,

our winter-enduring foliage, ponds, meadows, our inborn landscape,

where birds and reed-dwelling creatures are at home.* 

Winter is coming, in more ways than one, and it would be a waste to spend it hankering for spring.  Instead, let us find refuge in our inborn landscape, and feel at home.

 *The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke, ed. and trans. Stephen Mitchell (New York: Random House, 1982).

 

Round and Round the Bodhi Tree

To reach enlightenment, the Buddha sat and meditated for forty-nine days under a fig tree, later called the bodhi tree. My meditation group now has its own version of the bodhi, a big, scaly-barked, winter-bare sycamore. And instead of sitting under it, we walk around it.

For the last five years, the group met in one of the buildings in our retirement community. We would gather there two mornings a week for meditation stripped to its bare essentials: other than the chime that I rang to signal the beginning and the end of twenty-five minutes of sitting, there was no ritual: no reading, chanting, or even a candle. Just a silence that felt full rather than empty.

The corona virus put an end to that, at a time when we needed meditation more than ever. But since we’re still allowed to go outdoors, we decided to give walking meditation a try.  

Yesterday morning, we met by the sycamore. The weather was brisk, but my fellow meditators are hardy Vermonters, and they showed up booted, coated, gloved and hatted. We spread out around the tree, at six –foot intervals. Feeling slightly foolish, I rang my chime and started walking. How, I wondered, would we find the right pace, not too fast but not too slow? Obviously we couldn’t shut our eyes, but where should we look? And what about the breath?

Somehow, by the time we’d gone around once, all these questions had answered themselves. There is something self-regulating about the rhythm that walking imposes on the legs, the arms, the breath. Without thinking about it we managed to keep our distance from each other. Nobody tripped or got dizzy, and we spontaneously matched each other’s pace.

I kept my eyes on the ground, put one foot in front of the other, and felt more focused than I do during sitting meditation. Also: I have never in my life either talked to a tree or been addressed by one. But this time, circling the sycamore like a planet, I became subtly aware of its presence. Was it saying something? Probably not. But I was feeling something, and that is what matters.

I kept the walk to fifteen minutes, and when it was over people thought that we should increase it to twenty minutes and add a third day, because it felt good and we are all in such need to be in each other’s presence.

We dispersed until the next time, but before leaving I went to the sycamore and , disobeying the six-foot rule, put my hand on its scaly bark.

Litany

As a musician, my father was seldom home in the evenings, but on his nights off he often led us in saying the Rosary. My mother, her two sisters, and I would sit in the dining room while he walked up and down, beads in hand. The Rosary consists of five Our Fathers and fifty Hail Marys. How long does it take to say all those prayers? If you’re a kid, half your life.

“Why do I have to say those same words over and over?” I ask my mother.

“You’re supposed to meditate on the lives of Jesus and the Virgin Mary,” she says.

“But it’s boring!”

“Shhh. Your father’s about to begin.”

I stare at the bread crumbs from dinner that litter the yellow tiles under the table. The maid is waiting in her room for us to finish saying the Rosary so she can sweep and go to bed. I glance at my mother’s stockings, which she has rolled like donuts around her ankles to keep them from getting runs, and decide that when I’m allowed to wear stockings I will never roll them like that. I envy my father, who is allowed to walk while he prays, instead of having to sit still.

After the last Hail Mary is said, however, there is a reward: the Litany of the Virgin Mary, a list of fifty epithets of the Mother of God, which my father recites in Latin. After each name, we respond in chorus, ora pro nobis (pray for us).

Here is a sample:

Speculum iustitiae (Mirror of justice)

Sedes sapientiae (Seat of wisdom)

Causa nostrae laetitiae (Cause of our joy)

Rosa mystica (Mystical rose)

Turris eburnea (Tower of ivory)

Stella matutina (Morning star)

I don’t know why this list of names thrills me. Years later I realize that they have  something in common with Homeric epithets such as “white-armed Hera,” and “bright-eyed Athena.” At age nine, though, I have not yet heard of Homer, and I don’t know Latin. I can make out a few words, but even if I understood all of them I would find them puzzling: what is a tower of ivory, or a mirror of justice, and what do they have to do with the Virgin Mary?

But I love the rhythm of the Litany, my father with his raspy smoker’s voice pacing in synch with the names, and us responding ora pro nobis, ora pro nobis. On and on go the names, Mother of our Creator, Virgin most powerful….And this  extraordinary collection of praises is dedicated to a woman—one who as a teenager was visited by an angel, which was just the first of a series of amazing things that happened to her.

And now that She is in Heaven, sitting between God the Father and her Son, Jesus, with the Holy Ghost in the form of a dove hovering above her head, She looks down upon me kindly (Virgin most merciful) and with special understanding, because she was once a girl like me.

The presence of this quasi-divine Lady in the heaven of my childhood gives me something that the images of God the Father, with his white beard, and God the Son, with his brown beard, could never give me: a sense of identification with the divine feminine that puts me in the ancient lineage of females—Babylonian girls praying to Ishtar, Egyptian mothers praising Isis, Greek wives sacrificing to Hera—who, from time immemorial, have sought help and consolation from the Mother of us all.

The Mediocre Meditator's Prayer

Dear Goddess/God/Ground of Being/Universe,

Here I am again, on my cushion, chair, or mat,

with my breath, and bones, and heart.

Oh, and my monkey mind, too.

Already the macaques are leaping through the forest of my neurons, and I haven’t even found my breath yet.

Sigh. Right hip hurts a bit.

What am I doing here, on this cushion, chair, or mat?

What am I looking for?

Wrong! I’m not supposed to look for anything.

But a bit of peace wouldn’t come amiss right now,

Goddess/God/ Ground of Being/Universe.

Now the monkeys are throwing fruit.

Gently let them go. Breathe. Is it time to get up yet?

None of this makes sense.

Focus on the heart instead.

How long have I been doing this? I don’t mean just today, but in my life.

Years and years, but not consistently, not faithfully enough, obviously.

Or I’d be better at it.

Don’t judge. Breathe. Accept.

I can’t stop the screeching monkeys

or send blood to my left foot, which has fallen asleep.

The only thing I can do is to keep showing up on my cushion, chair, or mat.

So I do, mostly,

Goddess/God/Ground of Being/Universe.

Meditation Blues

It was the start of the new millennium, and I was in my first yoga class. The teacher kept saying things like "focus on the breath!" "relax your muscles!" "clear your mind!" What was she talking about? In those days the slightest attention to my breath instantly caused me to clench my diaphragm, which would in turn plunge me into a frenzy of analysis about my failure to achieve a meditative state.

Twenty years of semi-faithful meditation practice later, what do I have to show for my efforts?

I have gotten better at sitting in half-lotus, but as for clearing my head, let alone "going into a deep place," pshaw! The problem is my monkey mind, the Buddhists' term for the mind's tendency to flit from topic to topic like a troop of monkeys leaping through the forest.

When I started meditating all those years ago, the monkeys in my mind were an adolescent troop, erupting out of nowhere as soon as I sat down on my cushion. They had long, agile bodies covered in tawny fur, and cunning little white faces. They swung by their long tails. They chittered and screeched and fought over the fruits hanging from the branches of the trees inside my brain. If they ever slept, they only did so when I wasn't meditating.

Give them time, I said to myself, they'll settle down. They can't possibly keep this up.

And sure enough, over the years, the monkeys matured and slowed down a tiny bit...but then they started having babies. So now I have the original troop, endlessly squabbling over dominance and mating hierarchies, plus their spoiled, demanding offspring, who are forever wandering off and getting into trouble, stealing food, and screaming for attention.

If my meditating brain started out as a tree inhabited by a single troop, it has now become one of those ruined Indian temples in the jungle that are home to an entire nation of monkeys.

I know what the Buddhists would say: don't fight the monkeys--just watch them swing by, and gently let them go. So I try to sit patiently while the monkeys do their thing, not judging them, pretending that I'm watching a National Geographic special on TV.

Will my monkeys ever vanish? Will they at least calm down? I'm not counting on it. But occasionally a couple of them settle down on a crumbling stone wall and briefly groom each other. The chaos then subsides, and I feel myself breathe.

Don't Think About Tiger

“Don’t focus on finding a man,” old self-help books used to advise husband-hunting women. “Instead, get involved in something: take an evening course, join a bird watchers group, volunteer. And when you least expect it, the love of your life will appear.”

Lately I’ve been coming across similar advice, albeit on topics other than finding a man.

Like everyone I know who has tried to meditate, I often feel frustrated at my seeming failure to get anywhere. What is the point, I wonder, of sitting day after day with aching hips and knees while my mind compiles grocery lists and resurrects old forgotten gripes? When will I finally see results, find peace of mind, achieve even a dumbed-down version of enlightenment?

 Here is Thomas Merton on how to approach meditation (which he refers to as contemplation): “[A] law of the contemplative life is that if you enter it with the set purpose of seeking contemplation, or worse still, happiness, you will find neither. For neither can be found unless it is first in some sense renounced.” (Thomas Merton, The Inner Experience, p. 2)

As with finding a mate, it looks like the only way to reach a meditative or contemplative state is not to go at it head-on, with focus and singleness of purpose--not, in other words, in the way that we were taught at school. Rather the trick seems to be in a sideways approach, not looking the thing directly in the eye but waiting quietly for it to come to you, sort of how you might entice a wild animal.

Speaking of wild animals, I found an astounding example of this “pursuit by indirection” in a Nature documentary about the rare, elusive, and endangered Siberian tiger.

Sooyong Park, a Korean photographer, lived five years in the far eastern forests of Russia filming the tigers. He spent as long as seven months at a time in complete solitude, hunkered in a four-foot hole he had dug in the ground and roofed with planks, or up on a tree blind. He subsisted on rice, nuts and salt, in -30F temperatures, as he waited endlessly for the tigers to appear.

At one point, having gone eighty days without even a glimpse of a tiger, he became entranced with the beauty of the falling snow and started filming that instead. And that is when not one but three tigers—a mother and her cubs--appeared.

Towards the end of the video, a biologist who is also hoping to film the tigers asks Sooyong Park for advice.  Here is Park’s response:

“Don’t think about tiger!

 Only hear,

 see,

feel the Nature.

And then maybe tiger come….”

We each long for our own tiger. But perhaps, instead of crashing through the forest after it in the time-honored American way, we could try waiting patiently, focusing on our daily tasks, and paying attention to what is before us.

And then maybe tiger come.

(Park’s five years in the forest, which left him so weak and wasted that he could barely walk, yielded unprecedented footage of Siberian tigers in the wild. You can see it here.)

Zen Masters

A Word To The Wise...

Meditation Comes In Handy

I've been on a meditation tear for the last three months or so, sitting half an hour every morning on the floor in my study, with Wolfie curled up against me and Bisou snoozing on the bed (if I close the door and don't let them in they sit in the hallway and make pitiful sounds).  This is the longest stretch of daily meditation I've ever done, but it's still mostly a wrestling match with my monkey mind while my breath refuses to "come and go naturally."  So I've been going on blind faith that somehow this is doing some good.

Yesterday I went to the dentist to have a crown and a filling replaced.  For an hour and a half (I checked my watch) I sat in the chair with my head tilted down and my feet tilted up and my mouth open as far as it would go--no, farther--while the dentist and his assistant drilled and sprayed and vacuumed and said "bite down, please," and then drilled some more.

I was lying there with my eyes closed and sort of scanning my body for points of tension and then one of the phrases I sometimes say when I meditate popped into my head, "May all beings be at ease," and I said it a few times.  Then it occurred to me how lucky I was to have all my teeth, to be lying with not a twinge of pain while these two gentle people did their best to give me a toothache-free future, and to live in a century when these things were possible.

I was feeling grateful and dreamy and as though there were three of us working on the crown and the filling:  the dentist, his assistant, and I.  During a break in the drilling I heard him mumble into his mask something ending in "...so relaxed," and then the assistant laughed and said "If she were any more relaxed, she'd be asleep."

At the end, when she was putting in the temporary crown, the assistant said "It's so much easier to work when the patient is relaxed.  How did you do it?"   I hesitated whether to tell her the truth, but I finally said I meditated.

"I've read about meditation," she said, "but I always think my mind would be thinking about all the things I've got to do."

"Oh, don't worry about that," I answered.  "It happens to everybody.  It's just monkey mind."

She gave me a look, and then said "Be careful when you floss on that side.  You don't want to pull your temporary out."

DrawingThe Human Figure

After four weeks of snow-related cancellations, a small group of us finally made it to the lunchroom of a nearby deli that imports, among other things, olive oil from my mother's village in Catalonia.

We were there in the early morning to draw the human figure, the clothed figure as opposed to the more usual--in drawing circles--unclothed kind .  But you can't put a nude model in a public lunchroom.  Also, given the surprising but real prejudice against nudes on the part of (some) of the buying public (don't rich art lovers go to museums?), it seemed useful to learn to draw clothes--the fall and weight of fabric, the convolutions of folds.

On arrival we, the painters/drawers, moved aside tables, folded table cloths, arranged chairs.  Then the model came, a wiry young man, a farmer who had "only been up once" with his six-month-old baby the night before. He wore good clothes for drawing--an appropriately peasantish shirt, heavy pants, thick Van Goghish shoes.  He was amiable and at ease, and the morning light was ricocheting off the snow into the room.  We got to work.

Figure drawing sessions usually start with ten one-minute poses designed as warm ups.  This is my favorite part of the session.  There is no room for self-doubt or second thoughts.  You're like a camera taking snap-shots, reduced to hand and eye.  You dive onto the sheet and thrash about, trying to keep your head above water, and next thing you know, you're into the  next pose.

After this come the ten-minute poses, then the twenty- and thirty-minute ones.  Since the model is a live human, the longer poses are less extreme and, to me, less interesting.  But throughout the session, I love the peculiar, almost devotional silence that comes over us as we peer at the form before us and make marks on the paper, and are transported into a universe where the eye and the hand, bypassing the mouth and tongue, do their thing together.

When the time is up, I raise my head, blink, and look around.  I smile at the model, put away my charcoal stick, wipe the black off my fingers.   I stand up and stretch, put on my coat and drive home through the snow-covered valley, thinking how much life drawing resembles sitting zazen.

Meditator Wannabe

I understand that it takes a smoker an average of six serious tries before he or she can kick the smoking habit for good.  I've been keeping this in mind the last few mornings as I try yet again to develop the meditation habit.

How many times have I attempted this?  I can't remember--probably more than six.  I started meditating sometime in the 1990s, and I must have tried at least once every year since then.  Sometimes I manage to meditate almost daily for a couple of months;  sometimes for a couple of weeks.  This time, I'm hoping it will stick.

I've read lots of instructions on how to do it.  It's not hard:  sit comfortably, close your eyes, relax, and focus on your breath.  A mantra is optional.  Your mind will wander, and you will bring it back gently to your breath.

I follow all the above to the letter.  I sit on a yoga cushion on the floor in a half lotus, which feels comfortable to me.  I close my eyes, relax, and focus on my breath.  And my mind wanders.

I think about the dog--big or small, Wolfie or Bisou--that has snuggled right up against my legs and is now snoring softly.  I think about my mother.  I think about the next clay piece I'm going to make.  I think about spring.  Ideas for blog posts cascade through my brain.

I return gently to my breath, and next thing I know I'm planning next season's garden, and worrying that it will soon be time to retire (i.e., kill) my three old hens to make room for new ones that will start laying next winter....  But back to the breath.

While my, as the buddhist call it, monkey mind careens through the jungles of my brain, I notice a familiar tingling sensation in my right leg.  That's the one that always goes to sleep first.  Soon the left one will follow suit, and by the time my thirty minutes are over, it will take me another five to regain full mobility.  But never mind.  I should focus on the present, on the breath that has been going in and coming out of my body the whole time I've been ignoring it.
 
And so on and so forth.

Meditation is supposed to do wonderful things, both mental and physical, for you.  If you do it faithfully, thirty minutes every day, it will actually change the structure of your brain, for the better.  I can't imagine how something that feels so like nothing can be that effective.  It's kind of like drinking green tea, which is full of amazing antioxidants but tastes only like slightly bitter water to me.
  
I do both--meditate and drink green tea--once a day, on faith.  But often I can't help wondering whether both the tea and the sitting still aren't a huge joke that the inscrutable East is playing on us gullible westerners.

Meditation With Blizzard And Bisou

Afterwards I took the three dogs down the driveway for a walk in the storm.  It was absolutely quiet, except for a chickadee, who was singing his spring song.

Pooper Scooper Meditation*

(*This title was inspired by my friend A, who cleans up after a minimum of five dogs, every single day.)

I've always been charmed by those tasks which are mentioned in books of Buddhist philosophy as good practice for being in the moment: chopping wood, carrying water, sweeping the garden paths. Simple tasks, and repetitive, but also clean, spare and elegant, like a Japanese garden.

I have lately come up with another task which can lead one to being in the moment, to engaging in process rather than attaching to outcomes (since it is endless), and to maintaining a properly humble attitude: pooper scooping.

I have practiced pooper scooping on a daily basis for about a week now. At first, I used my long-handled tools--the shovel and the rake--to keep at arm's distance from the object of my efforts. But I have discovered that that doesn't work. To scoop poop efficiently, especially if it is encased in ice, you have to get up close. You have to grab your tools near the business end for maximum leverage, and you have to dig and carve. You sometimes even have to dislodge a stubborn bit with the toe of your rubber boot. And you have to retrieve the pieces that fly off and scoop them patiently onto the shovel, then into the bucket. You have to be present, you have to be humble, you have to be one with the poop.

Here I am, an educated 21st century woman living in the world's most affluent society, doing work that, in the cradle of Buddhism, is relegated to the untouchables. How ironic! How utterly paradoxical!

I believe that pooper scooping--like washing lepers' wounds--is an excellent Buddhist, and Christian, exercise. It puts you in touch with the present (you have to concentrate to do it well); it puts you in touch with the realities of life (food-to-poop on the one hand, suffering and death on the other); and it makes you feel gratitude (for having dogs, for not having leprosy). Its rhythm--walk, scoop, dump, walk, scoop, dump--induces a meditative state similar to that achieved by deep breathing methods.

Except that, when you pooper scoop, you try to keep deep breathing to a minimum.

Dogs On My Yoga Mat

My house is full of rugs, mostly used to cover up the scratches the dogs have made on our wide-plank pine floors. Lexi, Wolfie and Bisou run and skid and play on these rugs all day long, and the rugs are forever getting bunched up and moved around. But whenever I try to straighten up a rug, one or more dogs immediately get on top of it. Why is that? Does my focusing on one spot on the floor make them think that I'm about to dig up a bone? Haven't they figured up by now that I'm strictly motivated by aesthetic impulses? Do your dogs do this too?

But my dogs' behavior around rugs is nothing compared to their reaction to my yoga mat. The minute I unroll it, Wolfie and Bisou are on it, reclining like pashas on a divan. Is it the smell of accumulated sweatings? Is it the purple color? Is it the "energy" of the thing?

For some reason, I hesitate to shoo them off. In my yogic moments, I strive to become open and vulnerable to all life, so how can I make myself yell "off!" at these peaceable, well-intentioned creatures? I end up doing my sun salutations on a narrow strip of mat while trying to avoid nearby paws and tails and wondering what a true yogi would do in this situation.

When I sit cross-legged on the mat to meditate, Wolfie arranges his big frame so that his back curves to fit exactly along my legs, then gives a big sigh and puts his nose down on his paws. Ahh, I think, this is it. Matching energies. Kinship with all life. Openness to the universe.

Then Bisou comes along, squeaky toy in mouth, lured by the irresistible purple mat and the energies that swirl around it. She shakes her toy around, sniffs Wolfie's face, then decides that the spot between my ankles and pelvis is the best place for her. She settles in and quiets down. Ahh, I think, double bliss.

For a moment, all is quiet.

Then WOOF WOOF WOOF WOOF! Wolfie explodes, growling and snarling, having heard something dreadful out in the front field. I open one eye and peer out the window. Nothing. There is nothing out there but snow and ice and winter deadness. But by now Bisou has abandoned her nest between my legs and is jumping up at Wolfie, whose long wagging tail catches me on the cheek...

And I tell myself, back to the breath, back to the breath.

Spiritual Practice: Housetraining Bisou

The good news is that Bisou hasn't had an accident in the house in a month or so. The other news is that it takes a bit of an effort to achieve this.

She's six months old now, and her metabolism has slowed down significantly. This means two or three poops a day as opposed to six or eight. So that helps.

Also, she has figured out that P1 and P2 belong outside. She becomes agitated and runs to the back door when the urges strike. If I clip the leash onto her collar and take her outside, with a little encouragement she takes care of things quickly, and then can be trusted indoors for a couple of hours or so.

But, reader, this is winter in Vermont. When Bisou does her little dance at the back door, I have the choice of putting on gloves, coat, hat, and boots and going out with her into the elements(and then undressing again)--or of simply sending her out with instructions and watching her through the sliding door.

But Bisou (for those whom her fame has not yet reached)is a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel. The "Cavalier" refers to her attitude towards life in general, and I haven't figured out the "King Charles" part yet. But the Spaniel in her means she is driven by her little button nose, impelled to follow every rabbit foot print, every whiff of feather, oblivious to the signals from her vitals.

I stand at the sliding door and watch her as she goes back and forth across the snow, farther and farther into the woods, clearly having forgotten why she's there. As she weaves her way behind trees and bushes, I have no idea whether she has done the deed. I watch until I start to worry that she will disappear--perhaps be picked up by an owl. I become aware that I am not feeling serene or centered or grounded, but anxious and perturbed.

I call her--"Bisou!!" She stops--a red speck in all the whiteness--and looks at me as if she's never seen me before in her life. I put a falsely jolly tone in my voice and call again. Suddenly her entire past life comes back to her, and she rushes at me like a bullet.

This is all very nice, but a minute later she's at the door again, agitated. This time I abandon the fireside, heave a deep sigh, dress from hat to boots, clip the leash on her collar, lead her outside, and in a matter of seconds the mission is accomplished.

She's happy. I'm happy. She curls up on the arm chair; I sit before the fire.

The lesson that I cannot seem to learn is that SHE IS NOT READY TO GO OUTSIDE ON HER OWN. She is too young to withstand the temptations of rabbit and squirrel and bird scent. She still needs help. But me, I'm always pushing forward. She's signaling to be let out? Well, then, she SHOULD be able to manage the whole business by herself. Why should I waste minutes of my life putting on clothes and taking them off when she SHOULD be able to take care of things alone?

My unrealistic expectations are usually disappointed, and I have to get dressed anyway, and take her outside and stand there looking at the rising sun, or at the birds at the feeder, or at the stars (and in Vermont, we've got STARS). I could decide to just accept the putting on and taking off of clothing for the rest of the season. I could accept the notion of six or seven daily bathroom trips outside.

I could use the time to reflect on life issues, or to plan what I'm going to make for dinner, or I could just focus on the Red Baroness, who is doing her best to be a good girl, and all the pleasure she brings into my life. Wouldn't that make sense?

October 8, 2008 "Zen Hen"

There is a Zen master living in our chicken house, and her name is Buffy. She is big and butter-colored, and as close to spherical in shape as a chicken ever gets. If Zen masters held competitions I would enter Buffy, for she is a champion sitter—or, in poultry parlance, “setter.” When she feels the call to sit (or set), she makes a beeline for the nearest nest, fluffs out her skirts, and turns to stone.

There don't even have to be any eggs in the nest for Buffy to sit, and if there are, they don't have to be fertile. Before the rooster Charlemagne joined our ten hens, Buffy would regularly “go broody” (a term of art meaning “the urge to incubate”) and sit on her celibate sisters' eggs. The fact that for three years not a single egg hatched did not dissuade her. Buffy is into process, and does not attach to outcomes.

Then Charlemagne arrived, and for a while the temptations of the flesh distracted Buffy from her practice. But one night when I went to collect eggs I found Buffy sitting on a nest like a golden Buddha, broody again.

She was sitting on twelve eggs. I calculated that, with any luck, that should yield six cockerels and six pullets. The pullets would reach puberty in the middle of winter—right when the older hens would be taking a break from laying. The cockerels (this is the part I didn't like to think about) would be slaughtered at ten weeks, and we would have tender, home-grown chicken to eat (this is the part I liked to think about).

Quietly I transferred Buffy and the eggs to a nest in an isolated corner of the coop. She was in such a deep trance she hardly noticed the move. I gave her her own little dishes of food and water and left her alone.

But she, and the chicks growing under her, were constantly on my mind, and I went often to check on her. She was always the same--fluffed out, immobile, her eyes open but wearing a fiercely inward, focused look. I never once saw her get up to eat or drink or take a break.

About halfway through Buffy's retreat, I started smelling something awful coming from her corner. I picked her up and saw that there were six broken eggs in the nest. The stench was unspeakable. I ran to the house and coated my upper lip with Vick's (as I'd seen detectives do on TV when they had to deal with a decomposing corpse), put on plastic gloves, and tried my best to clean up the mess without upsetting Buffy or letting the intact eggs get chilled.

Six eggs, I thought, is not too bad. With any luck three of them will be pullets...But days later there was the smell again, and I repeated the Vick's and gloves operation, thinking that surely this time Buffy would give up and walk away. But she persevered, even though there was just one egg left.

Still, I said to myself, an only-child chick will be adorable, and with any luck it will be a girl...

Day 21, hatching day, came and went. On Day 22 Buffy still sat, focusing on her breath. I picked her up and there on the straw was the broken, chick-less egg. I hustled Buffy off the nest, cleaned up the final mess, and went into the house to nurse my disappointment.

That evening, Buffy was back in the corner where her old nest had been, sitting as if nothing had happened.

It occurred to me that I, who had planned and connived and counted chickens before they hatched, was suffering from disappointment, frustration and self-pity, whereas Buffy was utterly contented and at peace. Why? Because, unlike me, she did not attach to outcomes. Was this chicken is trying to teach me something?

One of these mornings, at my usual meditation time, I'm going to take my mat into the chicken house and sit with Buffy, and be enlightened.