Meeting with Bairoling Rimpoche

Yesterday we met with Bairoling Rimpoche. He is old; he is fragile. Julie says that when he is out of retreat, he has a Parkinsonian tremor and when he is in retreat; it is gone. He needs two people to help him walk. Two young men, one on either side carry him into the room while his legs move in harmony but clearly are not bearing any weight. He is gently settled into his chair. Then he looks around and smiles. He smiles with such love that my heart catches.

I have seen this look before. I have seen it in some of those I have tended who are dying. When the body is making its demands known, its intention to stop heard, something changes. The mind hears a call from another world; you can feel it. There is a kind of detachment filled with peace, filled with love. Rimpoche radiates both. And my heart is filled with it. It is a love that is not based on good works or behavior. It is a love based on being. All are welcome. It is the look of joy free from wanting something from me, just the pleasure of seeing me and everyone else in the room. There is no shortage here, no sense of limits. Yes he will tire, his hands tremble as he touches each of our heads as we come up, one at a time, to be blessed. But the the love, the love is clearly not bound in his aged body. His love is everywhere, enfolding, comforting, rejoicing. Afterwards, after we have quietly filed out and I am walking from that place, my heart seizes. How can I leave him? How can I live without such love, such acceptance? And grief roils up. I am back in hospice watching the family collapse around their beloved, grief pouring out and me vibrating with it.

I tell Julie of the love I felt and the grief that followed. "Ah," she says, "the love you felt will not die with his body." Then she paused and looked at me. "Although that kind of consciousness it is a kind of death, you don't have to die to have it." I ponder this. I hold it close. He is not the source of the love but a beacon glowing the way. This love, she tells us over and over again, is here already available to all. He is a door, marking the way, a light illuminating the path. He tells me, this tiny old, trembling man that it is possible for me to grow into this love and hold a place within it.

Thank you for being there, thank you for listening. I hold you all close in the skein of light, the fibers of love that connect us.

October 10, 2010 Back in Nepal

Yesterday we drove from Bairoling Monastery where I am staying to Amitaba Monastery, an hour away. The ride was across town over really bad roads and I was in the way back of the SUV. It was much bouncing and looking out side ways as the city of Kathmandu passed by. Images still linger of the markets, tarps spread out on the dirt with food, clothes and shoes displayed while dogs, a vagrant cow, chickens and people wandered through. These tarps lay five feet away from the busses and cars, motorcycles and bicycles that sent dust and fumes everywhere. And the people, poor, dirty, carrying loads on their backs or their heads, children playing or being led by a mother on the edge of the road watching out for the motorcycles and bicycles that like to sneak around the cars and busses stuck in traffic. The women are always beautiful though, their saris glowing in the brilliant jeweled tones and their luxurious, black hair thick in braids or tied in a ponytail or knotted on the back of their neck. The last part of the drive was fifteen minutes of up requiring a stop to engage the 4 wheel drive before we arrived at the top, breeze fresh with the scent of the terraced fields and pines that lined the way.

The monastery is pristine, freshly painting in the wealth of colors that Tibetans love. There was the archway that houses the five Buddhas sitting guard and then three more giant Buddhas, the last two gold colored shining in the sun that sit in the bottom, middle and top of the stairway that runs up the rest of the way to the top of the mountain. Amitaba Monastery is for nuns, one of two in the country. And you can feel them; their quiet grace as they move about, smiling softly when spoken to.

After feeling quietly nauseous from the ride, the breeze was welcome and I stood for some time outside the gompa (temple) and watched the hawks, looked at the valley below with Kathmandu spread out below, seeming another world away. And yet behind me, beside me were mountains still green with terraced land and trees on the top, a bright, verdant green. The clouds were wild with possibility, some whipped cream white, others dark and threatening. I knew that behind them were the Himalayas, like another realm of silent gods.

The next morning, at 3AM when I again woke, I thought of those images and realized that my life feels a bit like the landscape I had spent the day in. There is the part of my life that is Kathmandu, loud and messy, untamable in its desires and determination to wrest from it what I want, or what I think I want. But if I look at it in the wrong way, it makes me sick and I get caught in the suffering, my own and others. And there is another part, the part like the monastery that has fresh air that sweeps out my fatigue, my vague sense of illness. From this place I can see where I have been and can feel a moment of reprieve. And from this place I get a sense of the Himalayas beyond, softly moving, almost a whisper, of where I might go.

More thoughts on Nepal

Last year I wrote the blog but somehow these thoughts feel so personal that I am not so comfortable doing that. Maybe I will put this writing on the blog later but that seems not so important; sharing my ideas with you seems much more relevant. Your responses mean so much to me; I want to thank you for writing back.

So I am still struggling with sleep and my solution is to read. Before I left the US, I loaded my kindle up with the usual variety of fluff; romance novels, mystery novels and then a few, more demanding and thought provoking books of fiction and history. I like romance novels. I like knowing that love will out in the most unrealistic way, i.e., happily ever after. I also find it interesting to read about relationships now that I am not in a romantic one nor am I listening to others talk about theirs (except for my friends, of course). For the last few days I have been reading mystery/detective novels. This morning in my meditation I had this insight. The reason I am liking the detective novels is that our hero or heroine, who is extremely intelligent, intuitive and physically adept, overcomes evil. As I travel and learn the history or hear the current abuses of power where I am, I am deeply impressed by how evil we are, albeit intertwined with goodness.

Einstein said that the problem can't be solved on the level of the problem. I am comforted by this. I am doing something that may help in a way that is different than dealing with the problem at the level of the problem, not that I don't value that as well. Maybe this is arrogant. Maybe it is just plain wishful. But it gives meaning to the struggles I feel when I can't sleep, when I am overwhelmed with the question of what am I doing?, when I feel cut off from the usual comforts of this world, loved ones, physical ease.

Thank you for listening. Thank you for loving me, being my friend, my confident. I am blessed. I feel the tendrils of connection even here, on the other side of the world.

October 5th 2010

I arrived yesterday. All through the 25 hours of flight I was complaining and promising myself that I would not do this again, It's too difficult. I'm too old. But after I arrived, I found myself just smiling at all of it; the noise, the heat, the smells, the bouncing around ruts in the road, honking at the other cars. Ah yes, I'm back. It is glorious.

People here have god/gods woven into their lives. I passed the shrines to this goddess or that god as I drove through the streets. Today I spent two hours at the artist's home who paints tangkas as he spoke with us about this or that god or goddess, showing us the painting, looking up the mantras, talking of gods, talking of prayer, talking of lives changed and moving within this world of finding connection to the holy. But the holy is not some quiet, distant kindness but gods of passion with their consorts twined to them, multiple heads, arms legs thrashing about holding skulls, knives dancing on demons. Passion. It is full of passion.

It is so poor here. What we take for granted, paved streets, cleanliness, intelligent medical care are all distant dreams here. And yet the vibrancy of it all, the pure thrumming humming throb of life is so loud that I am humbled.

It is a gift, this travel. It pulls me into it; I shed skin after skin of assumption about what is true, real, necessary. And I feel that connection, that pull of being near, surrounded even, by great souls that prod me into being more than I thought ever possible.

It is a gift.

Kuttolsheim, France

I am in France doing a three plus week teaching. I am a bit at a loss for words these days. I am living with a French woman, her five children and a fellow student from Hungary. Eve, the French woman also goes to the teaching.

It is about suffering for me; how to mitigate it both for myself and others. Such a simple idea; making it better and yet how challenging.

Every day we go and sit, listen to the teachings and receive initiations on special occasions as only the Tibetan Buddhists can. At night or when I meditate, sadness at the heartache of those I love floats up like flotsam and I hope; oh how I hope, that there is some way to relieve it.

I don't know if you read this just as I don't know why meditating seems to make it better but whether you do or not, I am grateful for your presence in my life; it is a gift.

"I am loved as much as I am able to receive it" Thoreau

But my mind was on the baking.

June 22, 2010

Kitchens, the heart of the house, no kitchen, no mama. No one home. Where’s home? Blue mixing bowl, yellow batter, pancakes. Mornings were good. The smell of coffee, toast, laughter, subdued, not night time laughter. The everlasting optimism of morning. Anything is possible. You never know what a day will bring. Morning energy, rested but still softly sleepy, face fresh washed. Morning forgiveness, fresh start. Ah how many pancakes? Ask for what you want and get it. Where’s the butter? Do we have real maple syrup? Yes, yes, the answer is yes. People who are there in the morning love you. No fake social shit. Morning, light clear and revealing. What shall we do today? We need to go to the grocery store, feeding all these people food melts away like butter in the summer sun. Where’s the list? That’s the last carton of milk. We need more eggs.

“Morning, Papa, do you want some OJ?” Smiles of appreciation, eyes not lost in remembering, drowned in disappointment or fatigue. My nephews arrive with sleepy faces needing hugs. They seek out willing arms, thumb in mouth, contemplating the hubbub of getting breakfast for so many in the grandparent’s kitchen with no usual routine and familiar places to sit as we all circle around the kitchen, helping ourselves to more food, talking, sitting where ever we can. Then there is the slow building silence as people move out to run errands, work on projects, retreat to the living room to read, settle back into their own private reveries and close down the doors of interaction.

I am loved as much as I am able to receive it.

Those moments, those people are gone. Yet they remain frozen like an old movie that I can play when I choose. Nana and Granda are gone, My sister Ann’s husband, George, is gone. Thumb sucking Paul is now a six foot four inch 42 year old, his younger brother is six foot two with two small daughters. The farm is a park, the house, a visitor center. Time waits for no man. I stand in time as if it were a fast stream roaring past, legs planted deeply in rocks, leaning into the current, legs cold with the water, shoulders hot with the sun, breeze licking cool, balance swaying. The water sparkles in light moving, dancing on its surface. The light is beguiling, pulling me in, inviting me to dance, let the water roar past, let the film run lovingly in the background, let the breeze dry my tears, feel the power of the stream, the shifting boulders under my feet as the waist deep water holds me.

One summer, I haven’t told you about this, twenty years ago right after my husband left, I went on a five day horseback ride with Ann and George and another friend in Yellowstone. One night, summer sky still glowing, we walked to the stream coming from the thermal hot springs and went skinny dipping. I lay in the shallow stream, move upstream for more heat, downstream for less, feet anchored by rocks, arms floating and the sky, that big northern night sky above, changing from glow to almost dark and then the moon came up as we lay there. Walking home, the horses had turned to silhouettes, the night air cooled our water heated skin and we laughed into the quiet, heads back, wet hair down my back, body loose from the riding all day and the heat soaked night swim.

I am loved as much as I am able to receive it.

I haven’t told you that with my hearing aide I can hear things dogs can hear, or at least manmade sounds that only dogs are supposed to hear. It makes me wonder how many other things I’m not hearing, not seeing, not sensing. My spectrum is so small, so expected.

I want to stretch what I can receive. I want to carry with me, in my car, in the dentist’s chair, that river running through me with my feet anchored in stones and the light dancing, dancing on the water, in the leaves, into my heart. I want that heat that comes from deep in the earth to infuse my body so I too can dance in the light dancing in me.

A World Begins and Ends at Kitchen Tables

June 22, 2010

A cup of tea, blue mug, the string hanging over the side with the small pennant attached. Unnecessary stirring due to a certain reluctance. Maybe now would be a good time to truly stay in the moment. Does it count if my motivation is to avoid the future? It counts. Staying in the moment is so hard to do, any motivation is fine. Thoughts swirl. Why is the brain so meticulous, picking up every random thought the way dust bunnies collect in my house? I can always tell when I’ve played too much solitaire, relationships transmute into cards. King to my ace, a series of 3456 that moves to sit on the 7, all spades. And then the trash novel I’ve been reading, “his intense dark eyes followed her,” and then why does the GPS treat intersecting highways, mere exits in reality, as an opportunity to repeat, in that loud, mechanical voice, “In .4 miles stay left, then continue 12.5 miles on highway 680.” The brain seems to have little discrimination; any data, like dust, will do. And I aid and abet this willfulness less I be forced to notice that I have no goal, no obvious purpose, no consistent connection. I too, float about like dust, staying with Brigid, Jan, Cindy, Jenifer. Which day of the week it is determines whether I am in Oakland, Napa, Fairfield or Sacramento.

What am I doing? I am between trips, as I sip the tea, tea, the one constant—I drink it everywhere. I suppose even more than the tea, I am the one constant. Me, pushing me, forcing change, forcing discomfort, pulling at old ways and assumptions that say this is how life should be, this is what is deemed successful. Where have I wandered? Home, such as it is, for four weeks then back on a plane, back to Paris and then a tiny town in northeast France to sit for three weeks with a Tibetan rimpoche, to receive a teaching, stumble about with my high school French, live in a gymnasium—only 15 euros a night. Why? Ah, the tea. I hold the blue mug with both hands, fingers wrapped around soaking in the warmth. The solidity of the mug that can hold hot water over and over again comforts me. Sipping the hot tea I remind myself to be here, feel my butt on the chair, feel the heat in my hands. And off goes my brain. Einstein said that if anyone could focus on one thing for 45 seconds at a time, he could master his universe. Makes sense to me. My head feels foggy; I’m still driving in my car, listening to music, tired from night after night of minimal sleep. Ah, the litany of complaints is much more satisfying than considering what I’m doing with my life, especially when I’m a bit cloudy on that issue. Waking up can take lifetimes, my teacher tells me. No rush, as long as I am on the path. But why do something if there’s no hope of succeeding, at least in this life time? Point. That kind of delayed gratification is definitely un-American. So, what else would I do? Well, I could, to quote Jenifer, do something fun and trivial and make lots of money. Right. OK, well I could go back to work, help others. But inevitably that road leads back to here, that sense of utter depletion of having given too much, of facing yet again the fragility of being human and the inevitability of my own death. I sip the tea again. There is no solution to this argument. Nothing, nothing appeals.

When I am face to face with the rimpoche or other enlightened beings, something happens, my brain tingles, my heart feels stretched the way looking at the ocean causes my eyes to relax, zoom out and feel the size of this planet. It is as if, when these awakened souls see me, when they really look into my soul, I can, for that brief moment, see myself, see the possibility of myself, of how big my heart can be how much my soul can hold and at the same time, still be held by something bigger, something knowing.

I sip my tea. Einstein says 45 seconds is enough to change your life. I sigh. 45 seconds. It is an eternity.