Gone

I burned the stick of incense you gave me. When I got up from sitting, I noticed that the ash had not fallen as it usually does, but it remained in a straight column, and there was a prayer written on it. When I bent closer to read it again, my breath caused the delicate ash to fall. Gone.

So much of life is like this, no?

I have loved you all my life. But when I look there is no life, no I, no you, only love. I would never say this out loud. You are the only person I know who understands this.

The garden is coming along. I spend a little time out there every night, down on my knees, with my hands in the dirt. This effort will turn into flowers, pumpkins, vines and ferns. This energy will shoot up as bamboo taller than the house. I do it for you.

I love you so much and yet I know, our laughter, our friendship, our movement through time and space--all of that which carries the prayer of this love will one day fall, leaving nothing in its wake.

Knowing this, I am fearless. I, who flinch at a handshake will gladly die to feel your breath on my ashen form, reading the prayer one last time before it falls.

Gone.

Hiatus

I have been off. If you knew me better, you would not be surprised. Even I don’t know me better, but I know this: I was off and I am back. This is yet another temporary state. Just more wind, passing through the grass.

I am busy. And lazy. Why do people only notice the busy? This astounds me.

It is raining today. It hailed today. It has been sunny today. The wind blew. All of these are "today." Oh.

I saw my friend. He was distant. Even in his distance, he is more present than most people. If you laid on top of me, you could not be this present. Maybe you could, but I could not experience you as that present. A different matrix.

I asked my Teacher, "How are you?" He said, "Who knows?" and laughed.

Hiya

Two teenage boys in my kitchen, cooking home made pasta, cleaning the kitchen, singing Broadway hits at the top of their lungs. I might not survive this, but I have had a Vicodan and half a vallium. Even in my exhaustion, I feel their good intention and their affection for each other, for pasta and for me. It's like a dream. The pug is eating his dog food, because they have sprinkled parmesan cheese on it. The curley haired one says, "I always do that at home."

Funny how to live in this body for the next several days (weeks?) while it feels like I have woken up in some other woman's body.. one less flexible and more ancient. What are these bones trying to tell me?

One more day of teaching, then Monday I will sleep in. Then I have to kick in and finish 150 more slides and 6 hours of ISD currculum before I leave for Chicago on Wednesday.. or is it Thursday?

Hi to all of you. Hi. May you be well.

Oh, Now I See

In my last poste I pondered what it would take to make me give up alligience to a few of the more stupid things I do that continuously aid my self demise (not that self, the other one).

Well, ahem.

Now I know. Friday, I was shopping for a blanket to add to the bed of a guest arriving for a Saturday dharma event. This errand was sandwiched between food shopping, cooking and a re-write of the program for the event. These things were sandwiched between work, of which there are signifant amounts of late. You know the story..

I saw one particulary soft blanket and imagined how my guest might feel, all snuggled warm and cozy beneath it, and reached out to feel it. In the moment of reaching, the muscles in my lower back constricted in the most unbelievable pain.

I managed to get to a chair to sit down and I called a friend, who, fortunately, happened to be at his desk. We talked and I eventually decided I would give up on shopping, drive home and rest a little.

It took me almost a half hour to walk to my car. The pain was increasing with each step. I am a pro at pain. I have had a chronic illness that casues pain in my muscles and joints for nearly a decade now and I think I have done well with just continuing with it.

But when I finally got in the car, got my right leg in and started to put my left leg in, I realized my left leg was not, by any conventional means, going anywhere at all. It simply would not move, and my back was in such a state that I wasn't sure I could reach and lift it. Not only was I not going to drive home, I wasn't even going to get to the hospital on my own power.

I called my brother who said he would come immediately, but that he was about 45 minutes' drive from where I was parked. I remembered then that an old friend, a physician from San Francisco, was in town for the event and so I dialed his number. Between gasps and shouts, I managed to tell him more or less where I was and he agreed to come.

Half hour later, they both arrived and my doctor friend lifted and poked and nudged and pronounced that it was serious enough, but simple. We went to the hospital, where I gratefully accepted a shot of morophene and both vallium and two kinds of pain relievers.

At home, my doctor friend proceeded to instruct me in how to sit, stand, walk, sleep and a few things I will not detail here. He laid out in no uncertain terms what kinds of exercises I will now do ("consider" I think he said, but everyone who knows Yiddish knows this is Yiddish for "you damn sure will") and what I will eat and not eat and how I will never again do a few of the things on my Things to Which I Have Stupid Alliegiance list.

I feel lucky today to be able to sit up today with only moderate pain. I feel lucky to feel my toes. I feel lucky that I got an appointment to see a physician, even if it IS on February 28th.

Yesterday I couldn't read. Today I can. I am glad to be back to see you all again. I am grateful to Ankie, and Miss Thally, Mac and Ken and S, who called to see if I needed help; to K who brought food; and to my little brother, who always says, "If you need me, I'll come, no matter where I am or what I am doing," and to my mother who drove over and sat by me while I dreamed in opium delirum for three days. (Still having some trouble with words, excuse my rambling and spelling.)

So today I set medical appointments, readjusted contracts to not have to schlep a computer for 3 months, adjusted travel to include a few rest days and went for 3 walks. Really short ones.

That's all it took. Easy, wasn't it.

Changes

K writes on his site, “Frankly, I'm getting really tired of the struggle.”

I have been thinking about being tired of things lately and wondering, about my own mind and activity, when I will be tired enough of a few things to relinquish them (and I appreciate K, for reminding me of it in his poste).

I have a remarkably unshakable allegiance to a few stupid things. Anyone from the outside could see they do me harm, or at the very best, no good at all, and yet, without a shred of evidence to support it, I cling to their enactment as if my life depended on them. It’s a bit like feeling you must see a horror film, hating the nightmares you get from seeing it, and then signing up for The Horror Channel as your only form of entertainment. Geeze.

I do understand that causal effects are complicated–that these old habits have many, many causes, seen and unseen. But I help people solve complicated problems for a living. When people ask me what I do (to which I sometimes reply, with honest bafflement, “About what?”–until I realize what they are asking) I usually say, “I solve the problems of others, thereby avoiding my own.” It’s not entirely a joke.

Here is a small list of examples of my Current Stupid Things to Which I pay Daily Homage:

• I refuse to eat until I am so hungry I eat stuff that makes me feel awful. Good business for the café below my office, disastrous for my body.
• I get the least sleep possible when I really need quite a bit. Get lots done, die early.
• I refuse to offload work that I have no capacity for, and that I loathe. Take responsibility, exhaust myself and use up time that could be spent in fruitful endeavor.

Go figure. I am not tired enough of any of this to change behavior. I wonder what it would take to get me there. I shudder to think.

Pouring

Rain slips between dark clouds
and soaks the ground.

Enter me like this.

Something Safer

Gen-jo wrote today, a small note of tiny details, on brown paper. I have not seen him for a month now, but you would not know it from the note. He has no sense of time. My body left, but he didn’t notice. He probably still asks me to sweep the tea room and wonders why I don’t answer.

Le-da hasn’t spoken in weeks. I have seen her every day, but she is holding on to her sadness like a favorite doll. Maybe she thinks it brings out the colour of her eyes. Others agree.

Namchen has been busy. He has made one thousand candles to date. If he lights them all at once, we will loose our eyebrows in the blast of heat.

It’s risky business, this life. But I have never wanted something safer.

Surely

By what authority
do you capture the land inside
my imagination?

By whose rules are you allowed
to turn my attention on
the image of your face?

Which is harder,
having you
or knowing you will be lost?

I want to know these things before
we continue.

You leave a tiny trail
of love crumbs.
I gather them into the folds
of my skirt. Now what?

You appear later in a dream.
With careful hands, you open
my mouth, slip a finger inside.
Surely a shy moon shudders
to see such willingness.

Too Many from which to Choose

Sculpture by Debra Fritts.

His Love Resides

If I prayed to the empty wind
would there be an answer?

Would I rise
from sleep tomorrow
and find you in the kitchen,
reading the paper?

Would you point
to the tall pot
of black coffee
on the table and
pull out a chair
while you
switched to Section B?

I don’t ask God questions.
I ask him for answers.

I listen for his laughter
in the hollow of silence
and try to remember that
his love
resides in all bodies,
not just yours.

Weeds and Wanderlust

Oh my. Wander over to Paula's House of Toast (great image, eh?) and take a look at the photo trail she's left from her journeys on December 28th. Paula, you've outdone yourself.

Again.

Wisdom Diva

image by Tara Sullivan copyright 2006


Homage to the glorious Vajra Dakini! In ancient India, there was a country of 38,000 villages named Katchie. An old couple with three sons and three daughters lived in a western village of this land during a time of drought and scarcity. They were very poor.

Among all eight of them, they had only one vase of rice. They sealed the lid of this vase and hid it away, to save it for a more difficult time, while they all went out to look for food, the sons to the south, the daughters to the north, and the father to the west. The mother, who at this time was 59 years old, stayed home.

While she was home alone, a beggar, who was in even greater distress and hunger than she, came to their house. She pitied him and so she cooked all the rice in the vase and gave it to him. After a while, the father returned home, having found no food. He was very hungry and weak and thought that now was the time to eat the rice and regain strength before going back out again to look for more. The sons and daughters returned at the same time, also empty-handed and very hungry. They said to the mother, "Get out the rice now and cook it; we are very weak and hungry."

The mother said to them, "I thought that you might get some food, so I gave all the rice to a poor man who came here begging."

At this, the husband and children were very upset and together cried out at her, "You've done this before. Rather than go out as we do to beg and look for food, you give away all the food that we have gotten! You continually make us miserable -- Get out of here!" and they threw her out of the house.

The old woman crossed Katchie and came to the western Uddiyana land. She saw that all the men in this land were courageous and noble, and the women were possessed of great fortitude. Upon arriving in Uddiyana, her mind felt naturally clear. It was harvest time, and so she obtained a large bag of rice and soon had a place in the village market making and selling rice wine.

At this time, a great teacher, Birwapa, also called Awa Dotipa, lived in the jungle nearby, engaged in profound meditation. He had a companion, a very reverent and devoted lady, who went regularly to the market to buy him wine. After a while, she began buying from the old woman, since her wine was so delicious.

One day, the old woman asked the yogi’s companion, "To whom do you bring this wine?”

"I offer it to a great yogi who lives in the jungle nearby," she answered.

Then the old woman said, "Since this is the case, you may have this wine for free and she gave her some especially delicious and strong wine to bring to the yogi.

Upon her return, Birwapa said to his companion, "You bring all this fine wine back without paying for it. How do you manage that?"

"There is a very devoted wine seller in the market, completely different from the ones we used to buy from. When I told her that I come to get wine for a great lama, she was filled with devotion and insisted on giving this wine to me as an offering," she replied.

Upon hearing this, Birwapa said, "I should liberate this woman from the three samsaric worlds.”

The lady returned and asked Sukhasiddhi if she would like to meet the yogi. The old woman's heart soared with joy and aspiration at this prospect, and so, with a vase of her special wine and a piece of meat to offer him, she went to see the yogi. Birwapa completely bestowed upon her the four secret empowerments and instructed her in the meditation of development and accomplishment [i.e., form and formless meditation].

Sukhasiddhi was transformed into a Wisdom Dakini. By the next day, her 61- year-old impure karmic body was completely and naturally purified, becoming transmuted into a rainbow body by the power of her accomplishment. She became youthful in appearance, like a 16-year-old girl, her skin shining clear and white, and her hair flowing down her back. She was so beautiful that one could never look at her and turn away satisfied, but would always want to continually gaze upon her. She remained in the sky and became known as Sukhasiddhi, the Union of Bliss and Accomplishment. She became a selfless dakini and the spiritual companion of Birwapa.



Through overcoming death, Sukhasiddhi lives eternally beyond the cycle of rebirth and spreads her blessings six times daily to all sentient beings in all realms of existence by her great wisdom.



To those beings whose thoughts are pure, she gives teaching, and to all those who perform the secret sadhana and pray devotedly to her, she bestows many blessings and transfers extraordinary spiritual accomplishment. Likewise, anyone hearing the biography of this great wisdom dakini and thereafter hearing her name will feel inspired with devotion.

Quoted with permission from Radiant Wisdom, KDK Publications, San Francisco, 1979.