Tag: Zen

Duck, Duck, Duck, Zen

~ Deb ~ Leave a comment

My good friend and sherpa-guru, Denise, recently reminded me of the spiral quality of the spiritual path.  The idea is that the journey is not a straight line or even a chaotic one; it’s a purposeful and patterned returning and returning and returning to constant themes throughout our lives, each time seeing them from a higher place.

This might show up in our emotional work in this way: We visit a therapist in our 20’s to work through a particular emotional pain.  We journal and scream and talk and cry it all out until we feel a release.  It’s gone!  We’re light and happy and free.  Life is beautiful.  Until a year later when the same old shit pops up again.  It might seem we wasted all of that time, energy, and money.  But if we’re really aware, we recognize that we’re seeing the old pain from a slightly different perspective.  We’re a floor up in our spirit, but we’ve circled back around to the same side of the building.

The spiritual journey follows a similar stairway to heaven, and I’ve gone round and round.  I’ve learned to recognize different levels (“fifth floor: ladies lingerie, peace of mind”).  An early level is one I call:

Practice-Practice-Practice-Forget About It

Actually, there are at least two preceding levels: Practice-Forget-Forget-Forget, and Practice-Forget-Practice-Forget.  But, we can talk about all three together.

The practice is our spiritual work.  It looks different for each of us.  My practice is meditation, yoga, engagement with my spiritual community, reading, walks in nature, and general mindfulness.  Some people practice with prayer, church/synagogue/temple, playing tic-tac-toe.  Literally ANYTHING can be part of a practice if you have imbued it with that energy.

Early on the journey, I had really great intentions.  (Pause for delayed laughter.) I knew what called to me, but I hadn’t quite found the groove.  I worked at it.  Boy, did I work at it.  And I would forget it, sometimes for weeks, sometimes for months, and at least a time or two for years.  It took getting beyond those levels to really see how important the forget-about-it times were.  Those were the incubation periods.

Then came the next level:

Practice-Practice-Practice-Wander In The Wilderness

Until we completely purge our inner victim, we’re destined to periodically wail into the heavens, “My God, My God, why has thou forsaken me?” This is done with a flourish of great drama.  This is the level on which we find ourselves saying things like “But I’ve been doing my work; really I have.  Why does God let this HAPPEN?” (Wail, moan, general gnashing of teeth.)

This, too, is an important time.  I believe Jesus may have been on this spiral when he spent his 40 days in the desert.  It’s the level where we wrestle with angels . . . and devils.  At times, we threaten to scrap it all and live our entire lives in happy hour at the beach.  We are tempted to buy happiness by giving up the hope of joy.

The most important moments of transformation happen here.  We make a decision: keep climbing or jump over the rail.  What we don’t realize is that jumping over the rail only puts us back into a forget-about-it state.  We WILL be back.  We can’t un-know what has been revealed to us.

Eventually we reach a new landing:

Practice-Practice-Practice-Practice

We’ve achieved consistency.  We walk our talk.  Life still presents challenges, but these are much rarer, and we tend to view them from a place of detachment.  This doesn’t mean we don’t care; in fact, we have learned compassion at levels we’ve never known before.  We just don’t internalize pain so readily.

This is a beautiful level.  It can also be exhausting.  The practice brings peace, but in those 3:00 a.m. moments when no one is watching and we’ve dared to be really honest with ourselves, we still sometimes wonder, “What’s the point?  IS there a point?  Is something supposed to HAPPEN? Is this IT?”

And then magic happens.  It happens because of our practice.  It happens in spite of our practice.  It happens most often in those 3:00 a.m. moments of heart-opening honesty.

The magic doesn’t have a level.  It dances around the spiral like pixie-dust and star stuff.  It waits until we’re ready.  And then it teaches us the next step:

Practice-Practice-Practice-Surrender

Every great religion teaches it.  Every great master has done it.  Every enlightened being lives it.

How do we know God?  How do we align with Divine Mind?  How do we step into the One-Ness?  We. Stop. Practicing.  At least for a moment.  We stop everything.  We release.  We let go.

We surrender.

Much like the early levels, I’m sure there are some additional levels here, and perhaps the place of true bliss is one of surrender-surrender-surrender-surrender.

Maybe there is even something after that.  I’ll let you know.  I’m still climbing.

Never Wave a Brick Wall in Front of an Aries

~ Deb ~ Leave a comment

The best way out is always through.

                                                   — Robert Frost

My regular readers should know by now that I am presently running in continual exhaustion mode.   After three straight weekends of chicken pen building, it would seem that a regular, non-working weekend would have been on the docket.   But then the “doghouse” blew down.

It happened on Wednesday.  The canvas-covered, tent-like garage structure that we were using for a dog shelter blew away in the winds that Oklahoma sent our way.    I spent Thursday and Friday planning and then Saturday and Sunday building a dog house.

It is a stunning structure.  I might have even momentarily channelled my grandfather during this process.  It is large enough for both of our big outdoor dogs (and probably a third, should we meet with temporary insanity again).  It has a peaked roof, which now is low enough to actually hold in body heat, thank you Soonerville.   And as soon as I get the wood siding and shingles on, I’ll post a picture.

On Saturday, I thought I might actually collapse.  Why is it that only celebrities can be hospitalized for exhaustion?  Either they’re really getting treated for something scandalous, or they’re pussies.  I have to question that whole “hospitalized-for-exhaustion” thing because I feel I’ve pushed myself about as far as humanly possible and didn’t need any medical attention.

Then on Sunday, I felt oddly refreshed.  I was still achy and tired, but it was a comfortable, familiar feeling.  I no longer felt like I was dying.   In fact, I felt like I was living.

I’m beginning to get into the zen of accomplishing something every day.  I’m really beginning to get into the zen of building things.  Working with wood seems natural to me.    However, I am not getting into the zen of lifting a 4’x8′ sheet of 3/4″ plywood over a fence by myself.

When I was little and didn’t feel good or was just tired or maybe just didn’t want to go to school, my mother’s answer was always, “Get up and move around and you’ll feel better.”    It really pissed me off when I was 10.    Between my genetic material and my Aries nature, there was no way I was going to have a life of leisure.

And there ain’t no gettin’ around that.

Moore on the Buddha

~ Deb ~ Leave a comment

So, my friend Blanche got me one of those Page-A-Day calendars with zen sayings.  It’s becoming a holiday tradition, actually, since she got me one last year too.   It’s kind of like my spiritual Red Bull.  Every morning I sit down at my desk and rip off yesterday to find the wisdom of today.   This morning’s saying, however,  was more like caffeine-free Diet-Rite.

From the end of the nose

Of the Buddha on the moor

Hang icicles.

— Issa

Okay, does anybody else read that and have to fight the desire to respond, “And the dog barks at midnight”?

So I sat here and glared at that all day long.  It was in my peripheral vision as I worked and periodically I stopped and looked at it like it was a child tugging on my sleeve and begging for my attention.  “WHAT do you WANT?”

And, you know, the more I looked at it, the more it started to make sense.  I’m still not sure how it made sense or why, but it just did.  Maybe that’s the essence of zen.

Possible interpretations of today’s zen-on-a-rope:

The Buddha meditates in any environment, even a cold one that will make icicles on his nose.

The Buddha is not immune to nature, even in meditation.

The Buddha has a cold, but will not blow his nose during meditation and thus has icicles, or snot-cicles as it may be.

Perhaps I was subconsciously drawn to the saying throughout the day because it contained the origin of my name – moor.   My family name is of Scottish descent and comes from the moors, or rocky cliffs, on the shores of Scotland.   In fact, that word stuck out to me because it seemed so non-Buddha and far more Maxwell McCormack to me.

And the word drew me back and drew me back, again and again.   It drew me back to the same spot over and over until I saw that there are icicles on the Buddha because the Buddha is still.  And I hadn’t been in so long.  And I needed it desperately.

There is another saying from the above-mentioned calendar:  “Life without zazen is like winding your clock without setting it.  It runs perfectly well, but it doesn’t tell time.” (Shunryu Suzuki)  Zazen is the place of stillness sought in meditation.

Shhhhhhh. . .