See You In August!

It is that time of year. I consider it the last hurrah of summer. Harvest Time. the true end of the season for productivity, the beginning of the time for introspection. Time to get together and celebrate, reflect, and gather the seeds of the future. A New Year's Eve of sorts. The rhythm of my life marks time with this event.

When a womyn's thoughts turn to the Midwest, and tent seam sealer is applied!

I am leaving for Cleveland tomorrow. A flurry of excited packing and errands all day today. Then we caravan from Cleveland to the Festival. My 16th consecutive Festival is this year. Festival is becoming just a more elaborate backdrop for this "Family Reunion" with the best girlfriends a woman could ever have. These are the women I will live with like the Golden Girls when that time comes.

I'll be back mid-August, all relaxed and refreshed. The energy I usually spend with my car keys between my knuckes and checking to see if my doors are locked will be spent laughing. You'd be amazed how much energy that is. It's like a big gear shift from caution to joy, and I simply refuse to do without it for a single year.

Travel safely my sistahs!

The Michigan Womyn's Music Festival

Non-Doing and John Tarrant

I want John Tarrant, Roshi to be my cool Uncle that I can call up and have lunch with from time to time. John Tarrant currently teaches at the Pacific Zen Institute in the San Francisco Bay area. He's had lots of incarnations -- Jungian analyst, accomplished poet, lobbyist for Aboriginal rights in Australia (he's from Tasmania), factory worker, industrial fisherman, and on and on. He has written a couple books, one of which is called Bring Me the Rhinoceros & Other Zen Koans to Bring You Joy.
I went to see a talk he gave, and a workshop at the Unitarian Church, who sponsored him to come to Portland. It was a wonderful introduction to koan practice, which had been totally mysterious to me -- well, it still is. But now it's just slightly less scary, because I can now hear the koans in his warm Tasmanian accent.

He has an earlier book called The Light Inside the Dark: Zen, Soul, and the Spiritual Life. This book brings a lot of his Jungian influence, and is easy to open at any page to just enjoy a painting with words, really, that blends archetype and Zen, human experience and light.

Here is one of my favorite parts of his book. That rumbling underground you hear is my Puritan ancestors spinning in their graves.

Doing Nothing

We often forget the value of allowing the night and the day to flow in and out of the house while, on the hillside, the grass grows by itself. In general we are not lazy enough, and struggle too hard. Anyone can achieve things but to do nothing requires resolve. To become one with sitting is to become one with walking, with working, with jumping about, with being sad, with falling in love. The world goes its way, spring, summer, autumn, winter, and we are at home. What our integrity leads us to do then is what the old Chinese teachers called "the things of Buddha" -- eating, drinking, laughing, feeding the children, weeping, burying the dead.

The man whose aorta split open at sea said that when he was recovering after surgery, he noticed something: "The habit body, the opinions and thoughts that I normally carry around was quiet. Usually they make a kind of veil, or a buffer over things. But they were silent. And that was very nice."
When we let drop the veils of our usual preconceptions, we are closer to our lives, sustained without knowing why. When we cannot see how healing or the next step in our lives will appear, and no longer know what we can expect, the step we must take just emerges out of nothingness, like the grass. What rises to meet our need comes from a domain deeper than the realm of custom, more ancient, beneath our feet and our awareness, thousand armed, beyond our control. To live without veils, in modesty and unknowing, is to trust the abyss, as a swimmer trusts to the ocean, and gently moves both hands and feet; it is to flow through the day like boys on a raft down the Mississippi. The old Chinese teachers called such activity "doing nothing," or "not-doing." This doing nothing is an inner event that can take place in strenuous action or utter stillness. To do nothing is always harder than we imagine.
Not-doing, in which we lounge around and loaf at our ease, is a kind of falling out of our lives, the way when his aorta split the man fell through and beyond his habits. Visible and invisible hands reach out and we find that we have always been supported by much that is unknown ans beyond our plans. Just as Alice, in the surprising, uncontrollable moment of dropping down the rabbit hole, found a marmalade jar on a shelf, we meet common things in a field of wonder. The orderly progress of breakfast, lunch, and dinner catches us and there is the beauty of work, tea, jam on toast, the body's cabinet of pains, the quick feet of rain scratching toward us over dry leaves.
Unlike ordinary laziness, in which we merely avoid something we think we ought to be doing, the laziness of not-doing has a refined and charged quality. By comparison, ordinary laziness is hard work, and requires distraction. When we truly do nothing, a fertile, widening silence appears. Close to the mystery, we drift along. There is no resistance to delusion, yet delusion can find no ground to cling to. In the midst of action we rely on the stillness that is everywhere present. If the world is imagining itself without our existence, why then, we let it do so. When we truly do nothing, we allow that falling can be good, that arms might catch us when we do fall, that the world may sustain and surprise us at the same time. We respond naturally, witnessing the web of life of which we are a part, just as water runs downhill and the white clouds run before a breeze.
After a certain point, knowing and effort don't bring us into closer harmony with eternity; our love for fragile creatures provides a route. Francis of Assisi spoke with the birds. The Japanese poet Issa was concerned for the little forms of life:

Don't worry spiders,
I keep house
casually.
Not-doing, having no urgent plans, we dawdle in the intimate while, like a child jumping puddles on the way home from school. The world comes to us then, and we belong in it, in the morning light at equinox, with the hawks swinging on the updrafts over the headlands and, in the afternoon, with the fog rising out of the ocean to fling itself, kraken-like, onto the towers of the Golden Gate Bridge. At last we are at home in this fleeting life.

Where have I been?

I have returned from a fairly arduous journey to the Omega Institute in New York State, and then Worcester, Mass. All this to train in Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, or MBSR. This, as you may recall, has been a piece that is falling into place since I've been working on the puzzle of burnout and professional drifting.
It took three airplanes, a hotel for one night, and then a $90 taxi ride (which I thankfully got to share with someone) just to get to Omega. Some moments in the trip were quite stressful, as there were many transitions, and often, arrangements were to be made at the last minute, it was not clear how we might get from one place to another, etc. I decided that this was all part of the weeding-out process -- how badly do you want this training? I found myself thinking about Huike, the Second Chinese Ancestor of Zen, who stood in the snow outside Bodhidharma's cave for years waiting for instruction, then finally cut off his right arm. Bodhidharma only then agreed to give him the teachings. Okay, so it wasn't that bad! I was going to make a note of the difficulty on my comment card, when I realized that getting there was difficult for everybody. Oh. Nevermind. We got to participate in a 5-Day scrunching of a usual 8-week MBSR course. Then we moved to Worcester, and the UMass Medical Center the epicenter of MBSR, and home of the Center for Mindfulness, to discuss what we learned, and continue to incorporate the fundamental attitudes and philosophies into our bones.

There were people there from all over the country, and all over the world: Sweden, Norway, Germany, Switzerland, UK, France, Italy. It was a lot of fun to get to know these colleagues, and to spend such intimate time together. I think I will never forget serious Mattias from Norway, who, in a difficult-to-detect moment of levity, mentioned that in the CFM offices, he had found and sat in Jon Kabat-Zinn's chair, reporting in near-deadpan delivery and Norwegian accent, "And I think I am still high from it."
There were many lovely moments as well as plenty of irritations. Much like any retreat, much like any life. I enjoyed connecting with another Zennie and admitting that we had had it with all the talking and processing (a major component of MBSR and a very helpful way for beginners to begin to get a sense of practice) and just wanted to sit! We also decided that we would write our own book, called Mindful Bitchiness, and go on the retreat circuit, making millions. I still blame the hip-openers in the yoga portions of the retreat for releasing the bitchiness I apparently store in that part of my body. >:( grrrr

I have a lot of respect for Jon Kabat-Zinn, the originator of MBSR. He can easily be credited with bringing meditation into the medical mainstream. I'm glad somebody wants to actually do research. A portion of our training was about learning how the mind-body split happened (see Descartes), and the impact it has on us as individuals, patients, medical providers, etc.
The making of an MBSR teacher is a lengthy process, and that is as it should be. I have come out knowing a little better what I have and what I need to be a beginner MBSR instructor. I am so far doing all right with not imposing some time frame on myself, or having some particular idea of how this needs to happen, but rather letting it unfold, and choosing to take the steps I need in this gradual process -- to participate in a daily yoga and meditation practice, choosing to obtain support from going to yoga classes and meditation retreats, and now I have a mountain of supporting materials -- articles, meditation and yoga CDs to transcribe... and to gather a group of 6 or more friends / family / colleagues / hapless victims who will continue to show up for 2 1/2 hours a week and love me anyway as I practice my first 8-week course on them. eeek!
In moments of clarity, which tend to come from long silent retreats, I know deeply, physically that there is nothing more important than becoming aware of this life. It is something we all share, but that is so easy to forget. MBSR brings meditation and mindfulness to everyone. There is no spiritual language, no esoteric chanting, no shroud of the metaphysical, no intimidating rituals, no matching clothing, not even a charismatic leader! It's just moving through a few basic body practices, noticing our bodies and minds --without trying to change anything -- just noticing, accepting, or maybe not accepting, but noticing the not-accepting, and then noticing some more.

And from one my favorite (and only slightly esoteric) chants: "Moment after moment there is nothing but this."

Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha!

gifninja.com Create custom animated gifs at gifninja.com!

Upholding the Sangha Treasure

I'm pretty excited these days about a new project at the Zen Center I have decided to call:

Upholding the Sangha Treasure.

As Buddhists, we vow to take refuge in the three treasures, or the three jewels. Here is my humble understanding of this vow. The three jewels are:

• Buddha -- Finding a teacher -- someone who is connected through the lineage to the historic Buddha himself. Also the Buddha within -- my direct experience of life.
  
• Dharma -- the teachings of the Buddha
  
• Sangha -- the people with whom we practice -- others on the Path. The Sangha is the equivalent to a congregation.

We vow to lean into them and apply and express them wholeheartedly. Part of taking the precepts in our tradition includes writing about our understanding of them. Here is a little bit of my writing from almost a year ago about the three treasures:

Taking Refuge in the Buddha

...when I take refuge in the Buddha, it is the Buddha within me – my senses, by ability to perceive and experience the physicality of this moment. My fingertips on the computer keys, my belly digesting lunch, the air going in and out of my nose, the skin all over my body, feeling the air and clothes and temperature. All this touching of the earth, and interfacing and being stirred into the whole universe. When I awaken to this, it certainly feels like taking refuge. It certainly feels like resting, and simplifying, even as I open to countless millions of things happening, it is still calmer and less busy than all that thinking.

Taking Refuge in the Dharma

Taking refuge in the teachings. Listening to them, applying them, experimenting, trying them on for myself. Asking, “Is that so?” I was not much of a reader of the Dharma prior to coming to practice, which, from what I understand can be a good thing. I notice that when I am listening to Dharma talks in my car, or after a Dharma talk, weekend retreat, etc, I am usually able to immediately practice what the teachings suggest. Whether I do so gracefully is another thing, but the Teachings I find to be completely practical, and applicable to everything real in my life, and again, I find a calmness, a comfort when I do take refuge in them.

Taking Refuge in the Sangha

BTW: This awesome photo was taken at Great Vow Zen Monastery just after a week-long retreat focusing on the koan of "Mu" during which the whole group often yelled it sang it growled it ate it breathed it throughout the sitting periods!

I am usually very comfortable on the giving and sharing end of things, but taking refuge suggests allowing the Sangha to help me, too. And the ways that this has happened most for me has been in meditation instruction, the classes, the very container of practice when sitting – others’ practice strengthens my own. New people coming to practice, and being asked to welcome them, or teach meditation instruction has given my own practice great energy and focus. Making mistakes as the chant leader in front of the Sangha has helped me to observe my own Inner Critic and see myself with the kind of compassion I receive from the Sangha. I am amazed that the Buddha was able to do all of this on his own, and it makes me so very glad that I don’t have to.

~ ~ ~

And this is as lovely and concise (two & a half pages) a dharma talk about Sangha, by none other than Chozen Bays. She references the fact that the Sangha Treasure often gets short shrift. This tendency is sometimes referred to as two jewels and a rock.

So why this focus on Sangha?

Our Zen group is currently limited by the amount of days available for rent at
the Portland Dharma Center 2514 SE Madison Currently we sit here

Thursday and Sunday nights at 7:30.
Monday mornings from 6-7 am, and
Tuesday nights start July 1 at 7:30.

So we are working towards acquiring a Portland building of our own, which means fundraising and organization as well as commitment to stepping up and being the ones who are there to make more teachings available. We are not ready to purchase anything at the moment, BUT we are getting ready.

One way to get ready is to see if we can't grow a little more before making such a big move. We are planning more programs, weekend workshops, etc. for the coming year. We are also looking at what a transition from a smallish membership to a larger membership would entail. Apparently this can sometimes be a difficult transition to make, and there can be losses along the way. So in a big change like this, it is important to focus on membership, and to be more conscious and awake about what we are doing. Thankfully, this wheel has already been invented.

I volunteered to digest and then gather some folks to learn about a spiritual / congregational roadmap of sorts from the Alban Institute. The Alban Institute is a Christian organization that has done a lot of research into these kinds of topics, and it publishes materials for congregations who are going through growth, transitions, etc. The Zen Community of Oregon had gone through a similar process with these materials many years ago, and found it to be enormously helpful.

My plan is to focus on this workbook, and work through it with some older and some newer practitioners. Together we will figure out how it translates into Zen. My friend Robin will be helping -- she has a near allergic sensitivity to proselytizing, having graduated from an evangelical Christian college, and will be my sniff tester for Zen-zealotry, or Zevangelicalism.


I have a lot of energy for this. I am very excited about it. It feels foundational. It feels important, it feels like a good fit for my skills, a contribution I can make, but most importantly, it feels like practice. Practice that's not sitting alone with myself and my roller derby mind, practice that's not reading about Zen, but practice with the Sangha treasure -- that can be grittier and scarier, but no less important.

Happy Anniversary

My spouse and I just celebrated our first Anniversary! I started this little essay a few days after we returned from our honeymoon, but it never quite came together. Now, after a year, it's finished. Here are my reflections on being a "Zen Bride", one year later:


It started innocently enough at a weekend relationship retreat at Great Vow Zen Monastery. Patrick and I had been dear friends for ten years, which then transformed into a solid romantic relationship for five years. Within that time, we bought a house together, graduated couples counseling together, and committed to each other, to our meditation practice, to honesty with each other, and to making sure our relationship wasn’t just going through the motions. Aware that a wedding does not make a marriage, we had heretofore simply declined to jump into the marriage pool.

Yet, when Chozen mentioned that the heart of a Zen wedding is about a couple’s vows to uphold the Buddhist Precepts together -- this awakened something in us. This spoke to our hearts and it made sense. What if we had a small ceremony with our families and friends, to publicly vow our commitment to our spiritual practice and to each other?

What is a Zen Wedding?

There are not many examples or templates by which to plan a Zen wedding. Chozen says this is because in Japan, the Shinto Priests retained the purview of weddings, leaving the Zen Priests to officiate the funerals. A friend of mine said that wedding traditions are comforting because everyone knows what they are supposed to do. So this non-traditional wedding placed us in a no-man’s land where neither we nor anyone else knew exactly what was “supposed” to happen. This not-knowing can be both freeing and a bit anxiety-provoking.

Of course, the entire wedding industry banks on this anxiety, and then promises to soothe it with products and services. It promotes grasping for something “special” and “perfect.” Setting up expectations for some kind of peak experience, we create endless opportunities for suffering by falling short:

“Your Special Day: Special Days Cars can make your special day even more special! ... Arrive in style on your special day”

“Your wedding shoes and wedding dress may both be perfect, but they still may not be perfect together. Here are some tips for insuring that your wedding shoes are a perfect match for the wedding dress you'll be wearing on the big day.”

Simply Googling “Zen Wedding” results in all kinds of breathless suggestions:

“To get you going on your own Zen-sual wedding, here are some things to consider … Strut your stuff in strappy sandals, a sleek red dress and dramatic hair-do.”

To counter the stress of trying to have the Perfect Special Day, apparently, many brides now turn to Zen… products.
For $8.95, you can buy a box of ZEN BRIDE:

“This new kit addresses the harried bride-to-be with Zen advice to focus on Mind, Body, Spirit, and Heart, and to stay grounded while attending to the details of the wedding day. The 32-page book contains aromatherapy suggestions and meditations, and is accompanied by two lavender bath balls, soothing lavender lotion, and a lavender tea candle.”

Or another book for $9.95 called Wedding Zen: Calming Wisdom for the Bride. This one has a whole chapter on "Dieting Dharma (or the middle weigh)."

But the ultimate in Zen Bride Wedding Preparation apparently comes from a spa. For $550.00 per week,

“We offer a wonderful, sensuous, relaxing program of cleansing and luxurious body care to make your wedding experience pure bliss.”

Their “Zen Bride Home Care Kit” happens to you each week, and includes: “

An hour of Relaxing Massage - to release muscle tension & fluid congestion. Yogasana Private Yoga Session - to relax the mind and focus the thoughts. Body Bath & Skin-Softening Body Scrub - to bring a healthy glow to the skin. French Rose Cream Treatment - the most intensive moisturizing treatment that will leave you petal soft and smelling of roses for days. The Organic Facial of your choice - choose the best food for your skin. For an additional fee, you can also choose from our menu of blissful options to help your Zen Bride emerge...”

Our actual ceremony was planned for 10am, despite the absence of French Rose Cream Treatment, strappy sandals, or even shoes. We stayed at the monastery overnight, and slept in until about 5am, when this alleged Zen Bride emerged and we went to meditate with the residents. I admit to getting caught in some wedding preparation undertow, managing numerous details over the past few weeks with a variable amount of grace. I would catch myself chasing some idea about the wedding and how it should or shouldn’t be, or how I should or shouldn’t be. All of that had been exhausting. Now there was nothing to do but sit.

After sitting and chanting service, temple cleaning duties were announced. I wondered if I would be exempt, since this was, according to numerous sources, My Special Day. I was then assigned to cleaning the bathrooms next to the Zendo. I smiled inside at the incongruence of this activity with the commercial ideals of what a Zen Bride should be doing four hours before her wedding.

Gathering the cleaning supplies and tools, I observed myself, toilet brush and scrubbing powder in hand. Zen Bride. I welcomed the physicality of the activity, helping to siphon off some of my nervous energy. What better way to “stay grounded while attending to the details of the wedding day?” I thought about the friends and family that would be attending, and my immense gratitude for their support throughout my lifetime. Giving them a clean bathroom was the least I could do. I noticed a welcome reprieve from obsessing about myself or the ceremony while focusing on putting some muscle into cleaning the toilet bowl ring. I got a break from craving some perfect outcome and from trying to avoid some imagined disaster or feelings of anxiety. I was just cleaning the bathroom.

During the ceremony, I endeavored to remain present in my body, in the room, in the moment.

I made a point of looking at each and every face in attendance. It was such a joyful honor to see our friends and family all together-- I was beaming at the sight of it-- when realized Hogen was introducing the Gatha of Atonement, and I thought, “Oops! I should probably look a little more contrite right about now.” I focused on the feeling of my feet on the floor when my mind started to overwhelm me with thoughts like these and more, and I just did my best to return to the natural unfolding of the day. And then it was over.

I don’t think I came very close to the Zen Brides of the books and products, if that is even possible. I was nervous, excited, trembling, tearful, joyful, irritated, tired, panicked and peaceful, sometimes all at once. The whole experience was quite intense, and I am so grateful Patrick and I were blessed with this opportunity to articulate our vows-- to support each other and our practice-- in this open-hearted and public way. I just can’t help but think that I may have stumbled onto a powerful fundraising opportunity.

Introducing… The Great Vow Zen Bride Kit! Start your Special Day right with a toilet brush, environmentally friendly spray cleaner, non-scratching polishing powder, paper towels made from recycled material, scrubby sponge, and rubber gloves…

~Mad props to Jennifer Brinkman -- the excellent photos here were taken by her (the less than excellent ones were not).

Orienteering

It has been a long period of discernment. It felt very uncomfortable. Like drifting for two years.
I had a sense that traveling to China might possibly help put the last piece into place, but I didn't know how. Since I have returned, I am sensing that it has fallen into place. The part in my blog description about being a social worker "on the verge of a change" is what I am talking about. I moved from drifting to gestating at some point, and now I think I am meeting my new intention.
Backstory:
In October 2006 I attended the Caregivers' Retreat at Great Vow Zen Monastery; a weekend of meditation, education, and support for folks who work, paid or unpaid, helping others. Chozen Bays, the Abbess, is also a pediatric physician, and a specialist in the field of child abuse. She knows a little something about burnout, or work the difficulty level I liken to staring at the sun.
Hey, if a Zen Master can burn out, maybe I'm not immune. In a place of safety, we caregivers were able to speak from our hearts about the impact of our work. On ourselves. And so it was there that I was able to look at the list of burnout symptoms, and start to admit, quietly to myself, that I might actually have a touch of this. This was, as we say in the mental health biz, "ego-dystonic," i.e thoughts & feelings that are not consistent with my self-perception.I've been a degreed social worker for 15 years. I've been volunteering in the field since age 15, starting with facilitating peer support groups in high school. There I go again, justifying myself...

Anyway, my feelings towards my job kept returning to the realm of... tired. I could sum it up by saying: "I love my work -- there's just so darn much of it," in a high-volume, high-need county mental health agency with high-intensity clients. And there's the long arc of my career. Where was it headed? Towards more of the same.

So I took Step One, and stepped down to 32 hours. A fabulous quote I once heard in a conversation about the benefits of letting go: "Everything I ever let go of had claw marks all over it." Curious that doing something so pleasant would be so difficult. Why? I began to explore fear; financial of course, but also this sense of identity I have cultivated from being a social worker for15 years. Also see previous blog entries on my recovery from workaholism and the Protestant Work Ethic. Sheesh! My friend Becca eased the transition though, when she christened my Mondays off as "Camp Laura Day." Nice.

A lot of my trepidation came / comes from the worry that if I let myself consider leaving the field of social work, then I might leave the field of social work! Then who would I even be? What would I do? This was not helped by a story told to me by a friend and colleague about his psychologist friend who, in a similar period of discernment, took 6 months off to wander. After 6 months, and no further clarity, he wandered for another 6 months. And discovered that he wanted to... open a pet store. He is now apparently deliriously happy selling reptiles. Okay, so that freaks me out. Not the reptile part; the QUITTING part.

So a year plus of Camp Laura Day, and I'm not cured. Even though I knew / know that this is "Divine Discomfort," the kind of persistent itch that is trying to lead to some spiritual growth, my doubting and frightened mind began to turn to a favorite piece of dialogue from the Drew Carey Show:

Drew's friend: "I'm just not fulfilled by my job."
Drew: "Oh yeah? There's a support group for that. It's called EVERYBODY. They meet at the bar."

We all have an Inner Critic. And mine started saying crap like this:

"There you go, being totally lazy. Who do you think you are to even dare considering taking all this time off, making a big change? You have a couple of degrees, a nice indoor job, seniority at your workplace. You just started getting good at this. Lots of people don't get to do meaningful work. And now you are thinking you want to what? See, you don't even know. That just proves you are totally misguided. Misguided and spoiled. 32 hours. Next it'll be 20 hours, then none. What about your retirement? You're going to take time off, and fall apart-- have some kind of existential crisis -- meanwhile the rest of the world is going to work every day. Must be nice."

So I attended the week-long sesshin (meditation retreat) at Great Vow Zen Monastery on Life Vows in January of 2008. Please click here and here to listen to two Dharma talks from this retreat by Abbot, Hogen Bays. They are about the importance of creating / finding space through meditation to make room for waiting, discernment, clarity, confidence, courage, action. (Feast your mind and heart on a complete menu of MP3 Dharma Talks from GVZM.)

The retreat helped clarify for me that I don't need to relinquish my healer archetype. It is a part of me. It's just that some of the other archetypes in my soul would like to have a little room to breathe and a little light shining on them, thank you very much.

Here is a poem that came from this retreat:

"I Am Not a Thing, But a Process"

Bowing three times to Kwan Yin
Steeping in the waters of compassion
and the heat of practice.
Brewing the body and essence of Jomon
Accepting all THAT is.

Aspects of Life Vow emerge
One by one, like stars in the night.
As I emerge to look, listen, and love.
I have only to name them and connect the
constellations:  North Star, Practice, Truth,
Gratitude, Service, Healing, Receptivity, Creativity,
Liberation.
My guides.
Orienting to Openness.

Returning to sit,
Gestating under the golden gaze
of Jizo Bodhisattva,
A warm, undefended heart,
I vow to relieve suffering. 

Okay, but still drifting. Not sure what sort of action this translates into. So I waited. And waited. And then I went to China. And traveled with a spectrum of people from Zen Masters to non-practitioners. And I met lots of Buddhists who didn't speak any English -- from religious rockstar Abbots of huge world-renowned temples, to lay practitioners, to citizen temple-visitors.
What I noticed was the impact of practice. The fruit of practice. The light of practice that emanates from people's eyes, is palpable in their body energy, and flows through their actions. This is available to all of us. It just has to be uncovered. And there is a path, a way to uncover ourselves. It's meditation.

Action:
So I've duct-taped my Inner Critic's mouth, and made some decisions. Well, that's not entirely true. I've taken my IC's opinions and views into consideration, and put them in perspective. It's hard to write my decisions down, even with my little blog's limited distribution list. Making a vow public is one way to strengthen and support a vow. I have talked with my boss at work. And I am doing the footwork to make this happen.

I will attend a sesshin once every other month to start, and my goal is to go every month (except August and / or when Patrick gets to go) in 2009.

• This starts in July, when I attend a 10-day training in Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction.
• Then a 10-day sesshin in September.
• Then a 7-day training in Voice Dialogue at the monastery in October.
• Then a sesshin in December.

It's like going back to school -- without having to go back to school (Thank God).

Whenever I return from a retreat, I know: Nothing is more important than this. This. Uncovering this moment. This life. This is all we have. This is all there is. And to cultivate the clarity, to settle the mind enough to even see what's important requires meditation -- in real time. Then the sky is clear, the North Star is visible, and I can begin to navigate this life.