If like me, you’ve been working at home for the past 18 months. If you live in a rural part of America. Or if like me, many of your family members live on other continents thousands of miles away, most of your human contact may have been reduced to screens in recent months. And perhaps like me, without quite realizing it, a great chunk of your common humanity has become electric, one dimensional, and disembodied. I don't know about you, but all this remote work, all this pandemic living, has got me feeling distinctly odd in recent weeks.
This past weekend, I did several things for the first time in 18 months. I stepped out of my normal routines. I donned a mask and moved back into the germ-filled world. And it had a profoundly healing effect on my mind's health.
If like me, you’ve been working at home for the past 18 months. If you live in a rural part of America. Or if like me, many of your family members live on other continents thousands of miles away, most of your human contact may have been reduced to screens in recent months. And perhaps like me, without quite realizing it, a great chunk of your common humanity has become electric, one dimensional, and disembodied. I don't know about you, but all this remote work, all this pandemic living, has got me feeling distinctly odd in recent weeks.
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Today was intense. It involved tears. You may remember when I gleefully wrote about my first driving lesson.
It was two summers ago. I had sat with a group of 15 year olds through a Driver's Ed series (I was old enough to mother them all) and then my driving teacher, DJ, took me out for a spin. That blog contained the seeds of freedom and glee. I did my written exam, got my permit and... two years passed. And not much driving practice occurred. I found many other things to do and practicing driving was very low on the list. Admittedly, our car also fell apart numerous times, which didn't help. Last month we witnessed the final death of our kind VW Golf. Its transmission sputtered its final breath. So we got a Subaru instead—complete with four wheel drive and a moon roof. Today was the time to head out to the empty parking lot behind the Maine Mall again. To acclimatize myself with these new wheels. To attempt to master this mind-bogglingly difficult task of driving a car. This past week, I have found solace in an 11th century poet's mind. The great Buddhist master Shantideva. As bombs have torn through people and lives, and as chaos has reigned in the region, the country, the world. The accents on the radio and TV are the same Bostonian accents of my sangha friends down in Massachusetts.
Our Buddhist center was meant to be running a workshop in Boston this weekend, in a church just one street over from where the bombs took place. That workshop, which would have been led by my teacher, Kelsang Pawo, was going to be all about the power of our minds, and how by training our concentration, we can overcome our inner demons - harness our minds to all our good qualities and learn to be of service to others. It's been a time where I've gone deep within, to find an answer, and it's brought me again and again to Shantideva. There is the ringing sound of possibility in the air. It's the same every Lunar New Year, whether I'm deep in the flower markets of Hong Kong or in the polar ice plains of Portland. The planet feels like it is entering a new phase. The new animal rises to meet us; a snake with a playful game.
I am told, via my friend Alison on Facebook and the person who took the photo above of a print-out from Man Mo Temple (click on it to read the marvelously wacky predictions), that this will be a "wonderful year" for the horse. You may also spot the interesting mention of my "lucky accessory" of a Kirin unicorn. Today's post is named after my friend and fellow retreat sitter, Adriana. She is a wonderful character who lives in Mexico and is a master of digital worlds. Her name pops up in my Gmail sometimes, she's inserted the following words under her name: "karma surfer".
I love this line. It reminds me that life is about surfing the waves of our karma. Sometimes our world is easy and filled with opportunity and new beginnings, we jet effortlessly along. At other times, it feels dead and lifeless, we are bored and directionless. Or maybe we experience turbulence, we move into a mighty storm and it feels like we're going to drown. Nothing is going right, everything is going wrong. I first met Felice Boucher at a Buddhist workshop in an old church in the East End of Portland. It was a cold afternoon in February and flakes of snow were starting to swirl down Mayo Street.
She walked into the historic church-turned-art-space in an elegant winter coat, flanked by two best friends. Charisma oozed out of this lady. I liked her immediately. Over the next few months, as we sat on wooden chairs and listened to a compassionate Buddhist nun speak of death and the veil of impermanence, I got to know Felice Boucher, the artist. |
Peace BlogWhere I contemplate my meditation practice and how it aligns with daily life. Sometimes these take the form of poems. Categories
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