Softening

Buddhist meditation teacher Jack Kornfield tells of a teacher he encountered that led a full hour-long meditation with a group focused solely on “softening”.  Softening towards whatever arises; itching, pain, aches, desires for this and that.  Instead of reacting to our body and\or trying to “fix” whatever arises, to experiment with merely softening towards it instead.  This is apparently the reason we are told not to move during sitting meditation.  Not to shift your posture, or scratch an itch, or resettle your seat.  Instead of reacting, you are asked to soften into it. 

I’m guessing that our bodily reacting (shifting our posture, scratching etc.) isa way of trying to control something we don’t like.  Meditation is a time to experiment with truly understanding that we can soften towards what we can’t control or don’t like rather than trying to “fix” it.  Of course, you can relieve discomfort easily by scratching an itch.  But if you don’t scratch it, you learn that you can endure it and it will go away on its own eventually.  So, why would this be something I would want to do??   Not totally sure – but I’m guessing it has something to do with teaching myself that I can abide unpleasant sensations and situations, can even stop resisting them, and soften towards them as another way of encountering the world. 

Maybe we can learn to “allow” rather than fix,  to “soften” rather than resist.  I’m also aware that for me this is a VERY hard task!  But, a goal. I am willing to pursue.

Here is a poem from Dana Faulds

ALLOW

There is no controlling life.

Try corralling a lightning bolt, containing a tornado.

Dam a stream and it will create a new channel.

Resist, and the tide will sweep you off your feet.

Allow, and grace will carry you to higher ground.

The only safety lies in letting it all in –

the wild and the weak –fear, fantasies, failures, and success.

When loss rips off the doors of the heart

or sadness veils your vision with despair,

practice becomes simply bearing the truth.

In the choice to let go of your known way of being,

the whole world is revealed to your new eyes.

“Real tears are a prayer beyond words”. ~Christian Wiman

I struggle with my tears which seem to come unbidden at embarrassing times… like when people sing “happy birthday” to someone or when the pastor at church offers a heartfelt blessing to each person in the pews.  I cry at weddings and funerals, over poems and graduations.  My friends are familiar with this.  A friend once joked that I would cry if she read the phonebook to me.  Others who are not criers have asked for lessons!

            So, this quote has been reassuring.  Tears as prayers.  How I love that idea.  After years of therapy I have decided that possibly my frequent tears are not some deeply repressed sadness, but are perhaps the opposite.  They somehow feel freed to appear when there is an opening for joy!  (Or that feels at least partially true!!)

Here is a poem for you from Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer (see more of her wonderful poems by clicking HERE)

Contentment – by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

And there, beneath the white tent,

beneath the blue sky, beneath the stars

I could not see, while spinning somewhere

inside a spiral galaxy, I closed my eyes

and let the sound of flute and piano find me,

an Irish song meant to be played with a wee lilt,

though the tune itself knew something of loss,

and I felt my lungs swell and my heart expand

felt my spine straighten and my soles ground,

and I floated inside the music, stunned and surprised

by the vibrant inheritance of being alive. I hummed

with full cellular resonance and then, I was crying

—a warm spilling of tears—for what?

for beauty? for loss? for living with both in one breath?

What was it the tears meant? Oh friends,

as I felt it all with no attempt to push it away,

I was wildly, alively content.

Buddha's Five Remembrances

A Buddhist friend recently reminded me of these 5 principles of Buddhist thinking.  On the one hand, they can seem daunting and even pessimistic or at the very least unpleasant.  But as I think further about them, they are oddly reassuring to me.  The absolute worst IS going to happen to all of us.  That doesn’t mean that we should start sucking our thumbs and crying “It isn’t fair!” just now.  It means recognizing that we are all caught in the “inescapable web of being” as we UUs like to say.

This is not say that these truths are easy to swallow… but since they are true, it seems that we must at least taste, if not accept them.  How would you live differently if you embraced these 5 remembrances from the Buddha?

1.   I am of the nature to grow old. There is no way to escape growing old.

2.   I am of the nature to have ill health. There is no way to escape having ill health.

3.   I am of the nature to die. There is no way to escape death.

4.   All that is dear to me and everyone I love are of the nature to change. There is no way to escape being separated from them.

5.   My actions are my only true belongings. I cannot escape the consequences of my actions. My actions are the ground upon which I stand.

If we accept these remembrances as true, it seems to somehow allow me some freedom.  Since I am going to die, get ill, lose everything,   why not choose to live loud and proud and joyfully RIGHT NOW?