Please Happy

Shot this with the iPhone just before going to our first meditation meeting with the Organic Garden Sangha. Great name, right? Just going there and sitting and breathing and listening to people made me feel less alone. It’s hard to remember that there are other humans with hearts here when we’re all stuck, isolated in our own cars stopped on the highway. It brings out the nasty finger-giving, curse-yelling meanies inside us. It brings out the sad loneliness. And we forget that we aren’t too different. Going to the 7 a.m. meeting this morning reminded me of that. We’re all in it together. In Thich Nhat Hanh’s practice, and many others, we bow to each other. This bow slows us down. It allows us to see each other. It’s a way for us to stop, to let the beauty within me acknowledge the beauty within you. We are here on the earth. Together.

Thich Nhat Hanh has this saying that I love. I’ve sent the saying on postcards to friends and family as a reminder. And I wanted to send every member of the group one this morning: “I Know You Are There and I Am Very Happy.”

(The photo shows the moon among the streetlights.)

Thich Nhat Hanh’s monks and nuns are in trouble.

The monastery in the hills in between Dalat and Saigon is under attack. About 100 police showed up at the monastery last night. Three monks have been taken to who knows where. The remaining monastics between the ages of 15 and 35 stand in the rain, supposedly waiting to be loaded on to trucks.

This from Thich Nhat Hanh:
“Please practice to send your energy of peace and support. Your help now is more urgent than ever. If any of you can help in any way, especially those who might be present in Vietnam, thank you. Let the Bodhisattvas protect our young brothers and sisters.”

This is the Podcast that has the translation of the SOS message.

SOS from Vietnam.

Practitioners with connections to Vietnam are urged to call anyone they know in-country to try to get information and help. Others are encouraged to call the Vietnamese consulates in the States to tell them what is going on. Thich Nhat Hanh is asking everyone else to sit and breathe and sending loving energy to Bat Nha Monastery.

I actually visited this monastery last summer while traveling in Vietnam. I had hoped to stay for a few weeks to practice there with the monks and nuns. Once there, I could only stay one day because the police were suspicious of my American presence. Here’s the post I wrote about that.

Heard Thich Nhat Hanh speak in Pasadena last night. First person I see there – a girl I met in Vietnam last summer. Lots of smiling. Lots of breathing. Lots of almost crying.

Stopped at PetSmart on the way home to pick up some Natural, clumping litter for what has become a cat factory in this apartment. Snapped this pic from the checkout line.

Appropriate end to a night all about calm, love and breathing in and breathing out.

This girl has an Australian accent, spiky hair and gave a talk in front of 400 of us in Vietnam about sex as it relates to her Buddhism practice. Saw her again at Plum Village. She said she’d be there for a while. Never expected this. Her ordination name (bestowed by Thich Nhat Hanh along with the brown robes and hair shears) means something having to do with giving life or being alive.

I think only a nun with such a name could write such a Facebook(!!) message. Does this mean the nuns are on the Internets!?

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I’ve been having a lot of dreams about dying. In my dreams, I die or my siblings die. My meditation session last Wednesday during the weekly Snowflake Sangha meeting kept coming back to death. Breath, then death. Over and over, my mind going back to death, my focus coming back to the breath. Repeat.

Life is so calm and smiley right now, I think I’m worried I’m going to lose someone. Lose the wonderfulness, lose the happiness, the peace. Lose the perfect light around 6 p.m. that I look forward to seeing on the mountains every single day. Lose the kitty I snuggle with. Lose the intense and awesome conversations with good friends who live mere blocks away and continents away.

And, truth is, I am. We all are. We all lose everything. Eventually.

And so, to soothe myself, or make myself face this fact without hyperventilating and crying and yelling WHY?!! every second of every day, I turn to the Zen Master.

From Thich Nhat Hanh:

The Buddha has taught us to practice looking directly into the seeds of fear in us, instead of trying to cover them up or running away from them.

This is the practice of the five rememberances.

1. I will have to grow old.

2. I will have to get sick.

3. I will have to die.

4. One day I will have to lose the things I cherish today, and the people I love today.

5. When my body disintegrates, I cannot bring anything with me except my actions of body, speech and mind – they are the only inheritance that I can bring with me.

When we can practice accepting these truths in this way, we will have peace, and we will have the capacity to live healthy and compassionately – no longer causing suffering to ourselves and to others.

Last night at E and T’s house, we watched a rough cut of a documentary T is making on kayaker Brad Ludden’s first descents and First Descents. The former takes him to far flung places, such as Madagascar. The latter is an instructional kayak camp for adults with cancer.

Ludden and his team empower participants to “regain control of their lives by experiencing whitewater kayaking and other challenging adventure sports in a safe, fun and supportive environment.”And Ludden would say there is no difference between his personal first descents and those of the participants. Same rush, same challenge, same testing of personal limits. Same plunge.

The first day, the first moment, out of the van at the lake, participants are taught how to flip their kayak, pull their spray skirt and swim out of their boat. With no assistance.

First, you must flip yourself over.

Then, you’re under water. You cannot breathe. You cannot move your legs. You are trapped. But, there is a string that you pull to escape, to save yourself. And in less than five seconds, you are swimming out of your boat and up to the surface to air. So scary to anticipate. So scary to force yourself to roll over, to put yourself in that situation. And yet, so doable once you’re there. To rescue yourself.

Everyone did it. Successfully. Many surprised themselves.

This is a rather long preface to my own personal plunge story from this evening’s mindfulness group. Since beginning the group about two months ago, I’ve always wanted to lead guided meditation. To be the leader, you invite the bell, you say a small mantra for the sitters to incorporate into their breathing and you keep the time.

But, I’ve been scared.

Scared of sounding dumb, scared of ringing the bell incorrectly, scared of being too boring, too fast, too slow, scared of being too … blank. I felt like I was in Mrs T’s first grade class again when I remember never raising my hand unless I had practiced the correct answer several times over in my head.

So, when S asked me if I wanted to lead, I hesitated. His mantras are better. His voice is stronger. His bell ringing is clearer.

You said you wanted to, he said.

I know, I said.

OK. We’re ready, he said.

And so, I did it. I invited the bell three times with a wooden chopstick. I invited it tentatively. Faintly. It sounded like a chime. My voice shook during the first mantra. I found it hard to release my breath. I look at the clock constantly. I thought about how I was ruining everyone’s meditation.

Then, I said the second mantra:

Breathing in, I know I am right here in this moment.

Breathing out, I see it is so wonderful.

Present Moment. Wonderful Moment.

That’s when I started smiling and laughing to myself. That’s when I started noticing how anxious I was about the mantras. How unforgiving I was being toward myself, how unloving, how unmindful. That’s when I relaxed my shoulders, smiled, took deep breaths and got into my own rhythm.

And my little bell rings sounded like tiny little coin drops most of the time, like toy bells or a coin on a stove top. Until the very last one, which rang true and clear and made me breathe in deep and exhale happily.

Bringing myself back to my body through guided meditation makes me smile (albeit eventually), makes me release tension in my body, makes me relax. It helps me see my fears churning churning and it helps me take that plunge into the fear, into the unknown, into the possibility of failing. And, always emerge at the other end of it. Maybe I failed to perform gracefully, smoothly, flawlessly. But, I got myself to smile. And I help guide my friends in their practice. And they allowed me to try.

The mantras I read every 5-7 minutes for the 25 minute meditation (derived from Thich Nhat Hanh’s The Blooming of a Lotus):

1.Breathing in, I calm my body.
Breathing out, I smile.
Calm. Smile.

2. Breathing in, I know I am right here in this moment.
Breathing out, I see it is so wonderful.
Present Moment. Wonderful Moment.

3. Aware of my stable posture, I breathe in.
Enjoying my mountain-like stability, I breathe out.
Stable Posture. Enjoying.

4. Aware of my smile, I breathe in.
Smiling to my smile, I breathe out.
Smile. Smiling.