November 13: Happy Endings/Beginnings

I've noticed in my own life and among my friends and family that happy endings/beginnings seem to transpire most often when dreams are kept alive...but not forced. Buddhists call this “non-grasping,” and it is an important way of being that helps us reduce our own suffering. If we want something too badly, we suffer while our coveted dream eludes our grasp. In fact, it is said that when the Buddha was asked to summarize his teaching in one sentence, he said, “Nothing whatsoever should be grasped at or clung to.” 

November 6: Light and Love Surround Us

With the time change in early November comes a bit of melancholy as the sun begins to set to early in the day. Last year at this time I sketched a corner of our kitchen to remind that no matter how short the daylight hours, light and love still surround us.    

October 23, 2012: What Fuels You?

The irony of making a living as a freelance writer can be that you end up having so little time for your own creative writing projects…maybe even less time than when you did something else for a living. That’s why I have an “art first” policy, which means that I try to get up early on weekdays and spend my first waking hour on a personal writing or art project. The next half-hour is reserved for meditation combined with exercise, preferably outdoors. This time of making stuff, meditation, motion, and marveling (have the yellows ever been this brilliant in October?) – provides the fuel for the day.

October 16, 2012: Looking and Seeing

Sometimes I hurry through a busy day and realize I did not experience a single moment of true present-moment awareness. But fall colors have a way of reminding me to look, and not just to look, but to really see. And drawing what I see takes me even more deeply into the moment. I drew this tree a year ago but I still can feel the warm October sun on my back and see those deep shadows in front of me.

August 30, 2012: What Surprised You Today?

Years ago I heard about a Basque spiritual tradition that can help us capture a little mindfulness in retrospect. Here's how it goes: at the end of the day, either write in a journal about the questions below or gather with someone and ask each other to answer them:

• What surprised you today?
• What inspired you?
• What moved you?
• What made you think differently?

Okra is one of my recent surprises. How about you?

August 18, 2012 Real But Not True

 
Who among us isn’t occasionally led around the nose by our own strong feelings of aversion or wanting? In this April 18, 2012 podcast on Tara Brach’s web site, Tibetan Buddhist teacher Tsoknyi Rinpoche, in conversation with Brach, explains how we can be compassionate with feelings that are “real,” yet gently examine them to see if they are “true.” Sometimes our strong feelings come from past experiences that are internalized in the body, he says. Rather than suppressing or overriding them, we can take them seriously, gently examining them to help ourselves determine whether they are real and true – or real but not true – before we take action.

As an illustration, Rinpoche humorously describes the compassionate, mindful internal conversation he had with his feelings after he found himself unable to cross a glass-floor sky bridge between buildings in Thailand.

I’ll definitely be taking a look at Rinpoche’s new book, Open Mind, Open Heart: Awakening the Power of Essence Love.

July 27, 2012 Beauty is in the Eye

C. and I took an ecotour of a section of the Mississippi along eastern Iowa last night along with a dozen members of my reading group and a few of their partners. With our naturalist tour guide who navigated the pontoon boat, we spotted a half dozen great blue heron during our 90-minute ride. Each time we came close to one of these introverted creatures, the group issued a pleased “Ahh!” while the bird slowly spread its wings, revealing blues and grays, and meandered to a perch further down the river.

When we spotted a few turkey vultures drifting lazily above, someone said "They’re so ugly.” Another person quipped “Their breath must really stink” after the guide reminded us they eat carrion, serving as nature's clean-up crew. She also told us that if a vulture is in danger, it will vomit on its predator, stinging its eyes long enough for the vulture to fly away. Pretty crafty if you ask me, and personally, I love the sight of their fringed wings riding the wind current.

I’ll admit that the sight of hundreds of double-crested cormorants nesting in trees on an island in the Mississippi did give me an eerie feeling. There were so many of them, and their bodies seemed too heavy for perching on trees.  

The tour guide defended the double-crested cormorants. “They’re considered ugly by some, but they have the most beautiful turquoise eyes.” When I googled “cormorant eyes” today, I was indeed struck by the intricate beauty that I saw in several photos. What a color palate Mother Nature uses with that brilliant combination of blue, turquoise, and yellow!

We can assign our hierarchies to nature’s creatures, but nature just…is.