Mother Rita

Two beautiful foreheads pressed together,
we make a canopy of our steepled arms
and place our love here.
Palm to palm.
Fingers interlaced and hooked in rapture.

Hard knuckles of white against white,
we cling to this brittle branch of dreaming
where, for a hollow moment,
I hold you in the whole of me.

Was it the hungry cub, pawing out for its mother's milk
which woke me --
Startled beneath the quick blanket
that jerked the wind from my lungs?

It was then that I first saw you, Great Mother.
Oh how the rounds of your eyes
were so brown! As dark as the wet forest trunk
is heavy,
with earth's ancient groaning.

I found you on your bathroom floor
and fell to my knees
at the cords of your robe.

You were a shrine. My shrine!
Crumpled up on the cold square tiles.
A precious stone burnished over time --

One part coal and one part diamond.
Riddled with the disease
which snakes its way up your sternum,
and sinks its pointed teeth deep into your spine.

This is you, and you are not a dream!
Together,
we cry and coo.
Twittering as the doves do
on your back porch stoop.

I press the top of your head with my lips, feeling
your soft hair, wrapping
myself up in your juniper scent,
my wet tears pounding you with kisses.

Seeing the Light

I made pumpkin bread and pumpkin muffins this morning.

I loved how the light was hitting them through the kitchen window... they look like holy golden muffins. I wouldn't say they tasted quite as heavenly as I would've liked. I balked at the recipe calling for 2.5 cups of sugar when I was only using 3.5 cups of flour, so I took out half a cup... much to the disappointment of the muffins. They also lacked the moisture I would have preferred. Note to self and others: don't apt for the shortcut of canned pumpkin, just go for the real thing.

I attempted to save them by making a cinnamon and suger glaze with butter and cream. All in all? They were, just, okay. I brought them down to Carollton and shared them with the hospice patients and hospice staff.

I was finally able to get a nice, long, 45 minute meditation sit in last night. I'm looking forward to a longer one this evening. I'm still trying to ferret out what makes for the really awesome sit and what stifles or obscures a sit. Last night I found concentration to come quite naturally and easily. As I entered deeper and deeper into the breath I began to notice something peculiar taking shape. Whether it's an act of my imagination, or the "sign" Bhante G talks about in his book, I'm still not sure. It was incredibly encouraging, though! I began to sense being at a doorway. It had real shape to it, and sort of pointed up at the top. I felt the doorway surrounding me a little, like a bubble. I sat in this doorway for a few minutes, minutes which I knew wouldn't last because I had already begun to ponder the experience and think about it, rather than be in it. That's a tricky balance to manage...

I remember when I had my very first meditative absorption. It was back in Iowa on my 21st birthday in a zen monastery. When I entered absorption there was a distinct "popping" sensation, like bursting through or popping your finger through plastic. There was a domed light surrounding me and the color of dark army green. I have no idea what these things mean, but they were present and experienced on some level that was neither just in my mind nor outside of it.

The recent dhamma talk posted yesterday was also encouraging. I was reminded that, though we accumulate bad kamma through our actions, we also create good kamma too. And this good kamma builds and builds. When we sit for meditation, each time we do, it's building good kamma. Eventually, we must enter the jhanas. It's simply bound to happen, like filling a pitcher of water. Eventually, the water will spill over. I'm hoping that the doorway is a sign, a symbol, that I'm building that kamma and coming closer to the first real step inward.

Autumn and All Things Good

I can't sing the praises of this salad enough. Wow. Just, wow! Roasted delicata squash and fingerling potatoes, fresh kale, pepitas, radish, and a delectable handmade miso-harissa dressing. Well, I had to do a little improv for the harissa, which is one very elusive sauce to find. I've searched far and wide without any luck, until I realized I needn't search at all... it can be made in my very own kitchen! Of course, who has the time to put it together at quarter after six, staring at 50 pages of research needing to be read and analyzed for a grant proposal whose deadline is looming? Yea, me neither.

Chili oil can go a long way.

To balance out the citrus and spice in the salad, I also made a sweet corn soup finished off with yogurt and dill. I was unfortunately too full to eat this bowlfull after finishing off a plate of the delicata salad, but the husband had no problem polishing off both! Men... I wish I had half their metabolism!

What are some of your favorite autumn foods?

Getting Stuck on the Way Up

[Cleveland, our 6 month old kitten, takes a look out the window with his butt stuck in the blinds]

It's been a month since I've last written. I have only one excuse: school.

School has been amazingly busy this semester. It's no help that I also signed myself up for the impossible: four classes, practicum, research assistantship, working weekends, hour-long commutes. Needless to say, I dropped a class to keep my nose above the water line.

Even with the recent dropping of some of the load, it hasn't come without its consequences. In the month struggle my stress and anxiety levels went through the roof, I had an emotional breakdown, upped my intake of wine, and the meditation practice almost completely fell out of each day. I watched my sits go from nearly two hours a day, down to one, down to thirty minutes, down to thirty minutes every other day, and finally, twenty minutes once in seven days. I'm reminded of the story Phakchok Rinpoche told me about his experiment with the 'ordinary' life, in which he gave up meditating for an entire week. At first he didn't notice much difference, maybe he lost his temper once in a while. But by the end of his experiment he had become extremely stressed, angry often, loosing his temper frequently, in a constant hurry to go places and do things. "It was just awful," he said, shaking his head. He was amazed that people could function at some level -- albeit with varying degrees of insanity -- without the practice in their lives.

My month-long slope down hill felt very much like his experience. I'm trying hard to turn the boat around, but the current that has built up against me in the meantime has grown quite strong. There's a lot of resistance I have to work against just to get myself back to where I was on the path. It's not just the loss of concentration ability in formal sitting that's difficult to regain. It's more about the memories of various heedless moments I've had -- broken precepts, poor virtue -- that weighs me down. A careless lie, a mean word, one glass of wine too many... these things hurt the faith in ourselves necessary to push on.

I have an overwhelming urge to sit perfectly still, not doing a thing, but it's a real illusion of stillness that is actually lack of energy and motivation. I'm sitting still anyway, in order to try and slow it all back down. An hour's sit this morning and an hour's sit last night, listening to a few deeply meaningful dhamma talks, may help realign the focus.

I'm finding a little bit of inspiration in this picture of Cleveland from this morning. Even though his bottom half is tangled up and stuck in the blinds, he's still reaching for the perfect view.

Patience + Perseverence

I've been working a lot lately with two of the thirtyseven factors of enlightenment, as they're called. Patience and Perseverence.

Back in July, when I was at the monastery, Sayalay recommended two hours a day of meditation based on my "constitution." Since then I've been working my way up to that, but it is hard to (a) find the time and (b) keep my butt on the cushion for that long. What I've found is that she's right -- I do need two hours. Have I met that goal yet in one sitting? No. Well, not yet at least. I'm coming close. I'm clocking in just at an hour, sometimes a little more.

But it takes a while to get to that quiet, still place. For the first twenty, thirty, even forty minutes of a sit, it's like battling the wind uphill, to wade through the thick current of the mind to a place where there's a clearing. It takes a great deal of perseverence and patience to keep with it, to keep going, in spite of sloth, in spite of restlessness.

What works the best? For me, I have found that beginning with the feeling of love in the heart works best. It provides a sense of joy, calm, and well-being. It also provides a terrific amount of easily-accessible energy and stamina. For instance, tonight I began my sit focused on Rita. I thought about her, about her pain, and I just began feeling love for her in my heart. I let it swell and build, I breathed it out, invisioned it surrounding her, soothing her, healing her broken sternum, easing her seizing muscles. Whenever the mind began to wander it was so easy to bring it back to the object of love and compassion, because it's for someone whom I feel so strongly. Thus, there was a tremendous wealth of energy to keep going, and an easier advantage of staying on the meditative object.

After some time of this, I turned my attention to the breath. The breath came more and more into focus until it seemed as though I was the breath, and the breath was me. There was nothing other than the breath coming in and the breath going out. The whole of me moved with its movement, with an intensity that only the present moment can unveil. I began to approach the edge of something much deeper than I've seen or been to... I wanted to follow this deepening further, but it's still new to me and so I wasn't able to sustain it for much longer.

I've also begun to understand, by way of experiencing, the teaching that virtue is one of the main foundations upon which meditation and concentration rests. Virtue must be something which is constantly cultivated in every moment. Some talk about it as "taking care of the moment." When there is any sort of disturbance within -- such as anger, impatience, aggression, etc -- at any point throughout the day, it creates a rift, a ripple effect if you will, that reverberates into one's meditation time. Imagine yourself to be like a pool of water. Negative emotions are like throwing stones at the pool. The bigger the stone, the bigger and longer the ripple will impact your ability to be calm and smooth inside.

Seeds of Change

We finally had our belated honeymoon, a trip we nearly put off doing all together because of financial considerations. I'm grateful we didn't let money concerns stop us. We discovered a world of adventure together, learned how to rely on one another, trust one another, guide one another. A gentle quietness grew in us that gave way to a terrific, much needed calm and peacefulness.

The hikes were arduous, climbing over 2,000 feet nearly straight up the side of bare-backed mountains covered in nettle, sage, fennel, wild flowers, and camomile. We traveled over 30 miles with packs on our backs and blisters on our gritty feet.

I often spent the afternoon tracking up the mountain sides in search of wild camomile, making careful clippings and plucking the tissue-soft buds from their stems.

Often our paths were lined with field after field of wild flowers and herbs, filling our noses with the smell of god's great garden.

Some mornings the mist from the sea would fill the mountain crevices, blanketing everything in a cool fog. It was eerie and beautiful and full of such moving silence...

By mid-afternoon the fog would break free and the skies opened up to a glorious, crisp view of the ragged ocean far below. Much of the sea gave off an intense aqua color because of all of the gorgeous green serpentine rock.

By late afternoon fog could be seen gathering again like smoke rising from the sea towards the mountains, reminding us of the all too recent wildfires that swept through the ancient Ventana -- a site just 20 miles from the Tassajara, where a group of zen monks gaurded their forest monastery against the flames that claimed so much in 2006.

The trip was a remarkable journey. I united with my best friend, soul-mother, Rita. For fifteen years we have held between us an indescribably close relationship. Spiritual and profound, meaningful and prophetic, even rescuing at times... all built over countless letters, emails, and occasional phone conversations. Seeing her for the first time brought me to my knees, literally. I cried and kissed her head and listened to her for hours upon hours. I breathed her in and felt so much love flowing between us. Our presence together had a magical, healing effect -- not only for her, but for me as well.

I also really enjoyed meditating deep in the redwood valleys, or perched at the edge of a mountain overlooking valleys and ocean. We had the great fortune of hiking through Big Sur while the full moon grew in the sky, reaching her peak on our third day in, and waning as we made our way back out of the forest. The way her light illuminates the forest and the mountains fills me with awe and amazement. It is so much easier to become concentrated and quiet in the deep of the forest. It is much harder returning to the city with the trains and the traffic and the demands of home and work.

Nonetheless, we pick up where we left off. The new semester has begun. I'll be volunteering with hospice starting next week. Already the inner-workings of the psychology program have begun to fill my mind with introspection and reflection. Last night I worked on my personal loss history for psychology of loss. Creating such a heavy inventory brought a lot of 'ah-ha' moments as connections became clearer between life-moments of growth and regression. To look back and see this tangled string of losses and how they steered who I was to become from day to day, life to life, I'm finding a new sense of self-compassion and forgiveness. I am also seeing how every person I come into contact with has such losses in their histories, too, and this fills me with even deeper compassion for our shared humanity -- our shared pain.

Dog Days

This has been one of the hottest July's I can remember. Humid + Muggy. To cool off, I borrowed some dried lavender and a delicious recipe from my best friend and sworn soul twin. Have I mentioned how amazingly wonderful it is to have her so near again? Memories come flooding back... nostalgic for my "free" days as a teenager in some sense, but also grateful for a different kind of freedom that comes with wisdom and age. Though our lives have progressed in very different ways outwardly, on the inside, I still feel the oneness I've always felt with her. It's a nebulous feeling that is beyond my capacity to write about in a way that captures the true depth or essence. When she so much as blinks her eyelashes, I feel as though I too, have just blinked. When she breathes in, I feel it in my chest. Beautiful, and strange, and untouchable. It is special to me; sacred. This bond.

The lemonade, though following the exact same recipe, tasted different from hers somehow. Mine had more punch to it from the citrus, while hers was much more fragrant in the lavender. I invited the ladies over and shook the lemonade with rosemary and cucumber vodka.... a perfect summertime cocktail I dubbed "the herbalist." Unfortunately, the cocktail seemed to lack the intense aromas of the herbs I envisioned it showcasing.

We spent the evening doing what typical, and non-typical women do: chatting about failed relationships, stupid men, personal and professional insecurities. We laughed a lot and ate Jessica's amazing gluten-free coconut cake, brought out the old beloved "birthday book" of astrology, and I gave tarot readings.

Alone the next day, I decided to do a reading of my own. The cards point to stability in the home, financial security, and spiritual cultivation as well as integrity and the taming of one's animal nature. It also suggested my husband and I would have two sons -- possibly twins. I wanted to know if I should expect that last one sooner or later, but I could not get a read off of the last question. To be completely honest, I'm okay with later -- I really am. I'm also okay with just one child, which is something I never thought I'd say.

As the heavy heat continues to sit like a fat man on a park bench over Atlanta, I'm staying indoors and making things to cool us off. Mint iced tea and avocado gazpacho.

And as for the practice, well.... I've given myself a day's break. I've felt recently as though I've been too close to the pratice, my face pressed up against the mirror in order to make out my whole image: all I've been able to see is my nose, and mistaking two eyes for one. Sometimes it helps to give it a little space, a little breathing room. Relax, take a step back.... and gain a little more perspective. Then go back to the cushion.