Metta

Some catching up and brief reflection on attending the Loving-kindness Sesshin at the end of June:

It was such a gift to be able to sit, sit, sit after the difficulties of our situation with Hannah, the 2 year old labrador. The first entire day, practice was about giving ourselves loving-kindness:

May I be free from fear and anxiety.

May I be at ease.

May I be deeply happy.

There may be a little trepidation about the way the phrases are used here. I was initially a bit nervous about actually invoking the words "fear" and "anxiety." Aren't we supposed to frame things in the positive? Verbalize what it is we want, not what we don't want? I attended a New Thought Church for a time, and learned all about that kind of practice with manifesting things through our thoughts a la The Secret (which always ended up being about having and getting more stuff aka prosperity, abundance, etc).

What I realized in this Metta practice though, is that not saying the words "fear" and "anxiety" is like walking around in a jungle and not saying the word "green." Fear and anxiety, however subtle, seem to permeate everything. So the first phrase is a simple recognition of that reality. Dispelling. I like to imagine one of those rough wooden brooms made of twigs passing through the body, collecting fear and anxiety like sticky, foggy cobwebs.

Not avoiding the grief and sadness of Hannah, it seemed to process quickly. That and the powerful container of Sesshin. I was able to simply be present with it as it unwound.

And then there was the event of the future: Shuso-Hossen. Scheduled for July 1, Shuso-Hossen is the exit ceremony for my year-long term as Head of Zendo. It includes a talk, given by the outgoing Shuso about the koan they have been working on. Then the floor is open for questions from every person in the room if they so choose, the purpose of which is to test the Shuso's deepest understanding. It is sometimes known as Dharma combat, but Chozen Roshi helped me reframe it much more gently as "two arrows meeting in mid-air."

Sometimes in Sesshin, I would realize that every minute was drawing me closer to this event. I was mostly able to ride the waves of fear and self-doubt. I did wipe out a couple times Saturday evening and Sunday morning with some brutal Inner Critic attacks and what is now the perfunctory sitting an entire period (or more) quietly and constantly weeping.

It was surprising to me to feel such fear on the last days of a Sesshin. Especially one so ostensibly full of sweetness and light -- Loving-kindness! But I was not the only one. Several of us ended Sesshin with deep stirrings of fear, anger, pain. Roshi says that Sesshin works and shifts things so deeply in the unconscious mind, that the conscious mind can't know what is going on. But it knows something is going on. So it launches a five-alarm reaction. The story it gloms onto is pretty much arbitrary.

Past or future, the mind seems to flee this moment. Why does it do that? Why does it take so long to settle it down and then it rears up all over again like a terrified horse spooked by a plastic bag.

Never mind. The medicine is the same.

May I be free from fear and anxiety.

May I be at ease.

May I be deeply happy.

The sweetness of women never ceases to delight me.

This story begins with The Festival Hankie:
I think this hankie came from an antique store on "Antiques Row" in Sellwood, once a suburb of Portland. I think I bought it when I first moved to Portland and was still doing fun, touristy things, like visiting Sellwood.

"The Festival" is the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival, to which I have been making the pilgrimage for 16 consecutive years (until just this past August). There, in womyn-only space, I get to spend a whole week with my sisters from all over the country, and all over the world. We all converge on this place, to create this place, for one week out of the year which is like no other.

In a place without men, the threat of stranger-perpetrated violence is just about absent*. That's just the truth of the matter. And to have the opportunity to let go of the 24-hour vigilance that is reality for women everywhere causes something amazing to happen: Joy erupts. It takes a lot of energy to be vigilant. And when all that energy is available for something else, and I happen to be in a place with 4,000 other women who are also channeling that energy into fun... well, it's about as sweet as can be.

My best girlfriends and I camp together and meet every morning and evening in a camping-gazebo we have to haul in from Portland, or Cleveland, or wherever we are coming from. And in this safe little container within a safe big container, reconnecting with each other, we usually end up processing some sensitive, deep, painful material. And also laughing a lot.

One way or another, inevitably, there are tears.

It wasn't with this in mind that I happened to have it on me one night in the gazebo-- the hankie, that is. But I did, and it was a tearful moment for my dear girlfriend Amy P. When suddenly presented with this sweet, soft floral hankie, she enjoyed it so much that she started laughing, and to this day, we don't remember why she was crying.

So that year, or maybe it was the next year, there was a craftswomon who was using these old floral hankies and stamping words on them. Amy bought me a hankie with some flowers and ferns embroidered on it and the word "feminist," which I used as a little nightstand decoration then, too.

And then she sent me this one:
This hankie, you may recall, was featured in its very own blog post in June called "Sesshin Sweetness." I place all my nightstand and toiletry items on it at every Sesshin I attend. It includes the reminder in the corner that every day is a good day.

~~~

We recently had our Jukai ceremony. Jukai is a ceremony in which people are essentially committing to the path of Buddhism. They ask to be given the Sixteen Bodhisattva Precepts. Beforehand, they take classes in the precepts, attend at least two Sesshin, make a chart of the lineage all the way back to Shakyamuni Buddha, and sew a rakusu, a small version of a Zen robe. So in this ceremony, the teachers give them the precepts, their "robe" and a Dharma name. It is incredibly meaningful.

Four people took Jukai, and two took the Five Precepts. There were a lot of family and friends in the audience, many of whom had never and maybe would have never stepped foot into a Zendo! Whenever there is a Jukai ceremony, it is an opportunity for the rest of the community to take the precepts in our hearts right along with those in front of the teachers. It is a very active, meaningful ceremony for everyone involved.

So it was not surprising that there were tears. From someone in the ceremony.

Where I was seated, I couldn't see their faces, but Shinju, who was seated right up close to the ceremony in the audience looked to me and indicated need for kleenex.

The zendo was absolutely packed, and I was all the way in the back. Getting kleenex from downstairs would have been disruptive, but it was really early in the ceremony. Ah! I recalled the hankie, neatly folded in my pocket, and unobtrusively handed it to her.
After the ceremony, I enjoyed letting the newly-named Yushin know that this hankie had its own lineage. Now that it had now been employed in dabbing Jukai-induced tears, well that added another layer of preciousness onto it for me!

Yushin asked if she could please return it to me washed.

I got it back yesterday, in a cute little bag, and when I took it out to put it in my samue pocket, I found this:
Another beautiful, soft, floral hankie. Thank you, Yushin! May such sweetness continue to extend out into the four corners and in the ten directions.



*Yes, there are other places where this threat is practically absent: A house with many deadbolts, the monastery grounds, etc. Yes, women can and do perpetrate violence. But not as much as men do, and not usually towards strangers. Yes, there are non-violent males. I'm married to one.