Category Archives: Western Teachers

Teachers primarily of American and European cultures

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hearts that dance

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For some reason, the theme of dancing has been popping up in my writings.  Recently, I reviewed Mindfulness: an 8-week plan to find peace in a frantic world by Mark Williams and Dan Penman.  It’s a lovely book and as with any manual that guides us through our suffering, I approach it with a seriously critical stance.  Mark’s book makes it easier because of the chocolate meditation in the first chapter.  But letting that go, letting it dissolve, I am also aware that in my own struggles through anxiety and depression, I’ve never done well with the authoritarian, directive approach to healing.  I’m very much of the “let’s eat the pudding to see if it proves to be worthwhile.”  Yes, dear reader, the correct aphorism is that “the proof of the pudding is in the eating.”  In other words, like Zen, the words are devoid of teachings; the experience is the practice.

So with this book, I started with Chapter 1 and practiced each day to truly experience the cultivation of a different stance to my life as it is.  Here.  Now.  And yes, the chocolate helped.  But what helped more than anything is the connection with a lovely idea that our practice is one of learning to dance with life again.  I feel like I’m surfacing out of a heavy fog or maybe making land from a storm.  Whatever the metaphor of coming into ground from chaos, it feels like it is time to dance into my life.

Whole-heartedly.

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did you know you’ve already been chosen?

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In response to yesterday’s post about hiding under a bushel and hoping to be chosen, my dear pal posted on the 108 Zen Books Facebook page, “perhaps you just haven’t realized that you have been chosen….”  I posted back a smart-ass comment but she’s right.  About the same time, I was reading a practice tip post by Ken McLeod about our reactions to adversity.  Some respond with gratitude and some with bitterness.  Why?, asked a reader.  McLeod’s response is here.  In essence he says it’s normal to react with “Why me?” which leads to all forms anxiety in the absence of a good enough answer.  In the end it comes down to accepting that you may never know why something happens to you.  Then he writes that through acceptance we find a way to be with the event with equanimity:

In the case of cruelty, you recognize that, however cruel and vicious your assailant, you understand, even though it makes no rational sense. Yet you have no sense of moral superiority or righteousness. 

The last sentence was a heart-opener.  I had shared with a colleague the frustration of seeing someone “get ahead” despite what I saw as all his shortcomings.  And digging into the raw truth I said, Why not me?  Somewhere along the back-and-forth of our conversation he used the word “jealous.”  While it didn’t feel right, it made me sit up and listen to my tone, examine my intention, and dig deeper.  Was I really jealous?  Was it about belonging in a place and space to which I was not entitled?  Was it greed?  Unearned assets?  I’m going to need a convoy of backhoes and bulldozers to get into this one!

When I tie in McLeod’s statement of being released from a sense of moral superiority and righteousness, I can get a glimmer of what might be happening.  True, I react strongly to injustice.  But is righteousness the appropriate response to injustice?  Is there even such a thing as a personal injustice or is that just a euphemism for self-centered?  Oh dear.  Pants down again!

Practice tells me that the path out of this is one of gratitude.  Accepting that there are many places I will never enter.  So being grateful for all the millions of hectares of space I can enter is important to see and practice seeing clearly.  I’ve already been chosen.  There is nothing more to add.  Nothing more to demand.  But it doesn’t stop there.  These friends, colleagues, and teaching moments are just ingredients for the meal.  They are wasted left in the fridge and no more nourishing than the poison of all hindrances.

Time to get cooking!