Shade

I've been thinking about attention.   Shining the light of my awareness strongly helps me discern the "what's going on here?" in my practice.   But somewhere recently I heard someone use the word diffused in describing the attention in a yoga posture.  I was intrigued.   The image in my head was of light diffused through green leaves...dappled, cool, soft.  I've been using this diffused attention more often.  I like the feeling of shifting between the two.  I travel the body bit by bit, making little adjustments here and there.  I feel my way into my body as it wants to respond to this shape today.  And then I allow my attention to diffuse through the whole body all at once.  It brings ease to the shape but also to my mind.

Rapt

I recently stumbled across "Rapt - Attention and the Focused Life" by Winifred Gallagher.  She writes of a universe of ways that paying attention (or not) create the life we live.  The book contains plenty of neuroscience for the geeks among us, but it's an easy read for the less geeky.  Here is how the book ends...

Attending to pleasure is a reward in itself, but savoring also boosts your quotient of positive emotion, which in turn expands your focus and may confer health benefits, such as improved resilience and immune function.  During an illness, says Bryant (Fred Bryant, psychologist at Loyola University in Chicago), 'you should savor not just for the sheer joy of it, but also to help yourself recover.'  Then too, he says, 'just because something bad is happening doesn't mean lots of good things aren't also.  They're two very different phenomena.  The joy and meaning you find in life and the current stressor -- an illness, a troubled relative, a career setback -- are separate concerns, and you can experience both.'

The best strategy for savoring is learning to pay rapt attention to carefully chosen top-down targets.  To practice this skill, Bryant suggests taking a 'daily vacation': spending twenty to thirty minutes focusing on something you enjoy or suspect you might but have never done.  Then, at the end of the day, you revisit and relish that pleasurable interlude and plan the next sojourn.  After seven days, he says, 'most people say,  "What a great week! I wish I could do that all of the time!" Well why not?'

Savasana

Today, in savasana, my mind was whirling away about a variety of things.  Not worrying, not fretting, just thinking.  I was thinking about yoga and how it really takes discipline and patience.  That's the tough love bit I haven't been sharing much lately.  There's the nice relaxing "I-sleep-better-on-the-days-I-do-yoga" experience of yoga.  There's a lot to be said for that kind of experience.  But I suspect there's a little bit of cotton candy quality to it.  It seems substantial but melts into nothing fairly quickly.

I was thinking about how there's "change" and then there's "transformation".  Change happens no matter what.  There's no stopping it.  Transformation takes discipline, mindfulness, and patience.

The first of the yoga sutras of Patanjali is sometimes translated as "And now the teaching of yoga begins", as if that occurrence happens once and then we are on the path.  I've come to realize that that moment where the teaching of yoga begins happens now...and now...and now.  And so do the opportunities to miss the moment.  Fortunately the  moment comes around again.  It's never too late.

While this was all swirling around in my head, I woke up to the fact that my body had found a place of profound relaxation.  So profound it sent a ripple of pleasure through me to notice it finally.  Mostly that doesn't happen.  When the mind is busy the body sort of picks up on it as well.  But today my body took me where I needed to go and then waited for me to notice.


And now the teaching of yoga begins.

Lu was always really good at Savasana

A work in progress

This week I've been having some lively conversations in person, on Facebook and in emails about yoga.  I got my knickers in a twist, as they say, after reading a couple of articles in the paper that I'm going to say were a bit shallow and...well okay...I got annoyed.  I got defensive.  Yoga really doesn't need to be defended.  My practice is what it is.  It's a living event, a work in progress...and so am I. (Sometimes it's art!)


Usually I say yoga and meditation...as if they are two different things. But for me, they are one and the same thing.  Sometimes I'm moving and sometimes I'm not.  So when I practice yoga, everything is grist for the mill.  Even getting grumpy over someone else's comments about yoga is folded into practice.  This week, perhaps I'll practice renunciation.  I'm going to renounce worrying about what people in the popular press say about yoga.  Or maybe I'll just see my annoyance and defensiveness as some kind of love instead of a character flaw.  Who knows what I'll find.  That's why I love to practice yoga.  The living event unfolds in unexpected and sometimes delightful ways.

Here's a piece from Paths to God, Living the Bhagavad Gita by Ram Dass.  He talks about playing with renouncing desires, but renouncing pet peeves seems like it will be just as fruitful.

"If you want to play a little bit with a renunciation practice, pick some desire that you encounter every day. You decide which one: the desire to eat something or other, the desire for a cigarette, whatever it is you want to play with. Pick something that you usually give in to every day — like, let's say, a cup of coffee in the morning — and for one day, don't do it. Then the next day, do it much more than you usually would — have two cups of coffee. Start to study your reactions. Notice the difference in your feelings toward the desire on the first day and on the second day.

"Maybe another time you'll want to take two desires to work with: one day don't satisfy one and doubly satisfy the other, and then flip them around. Try to be very attentive to what's going through your mind about it. If you're keeping a journal, write about it in your journal. Start to relate to your desires as something you can scrutinize rather than as things that totally suck you in all the time, things that consume you. Get into a friendly relationship with your desires. Play with them, instead of being driven by them all the time. Desires get to be fun, really, once we're observing them instead of mechanically reacting to them.
"The whole game of renunciation and purification is an experiment — an experiment in how quickly we can extricate ourselves from being attached to our desire systems. Notice that it isn't a question of getting rid of desires — that's a misunderstanding. Trust me, the desires will stay around! We're just loosening their hold on us, getting clear enough of them so we can see them in some sort of context.”


And ps...check out this blog post from the Dalai Grandma on the Basis of Practice.

Under the weather

I woke up this morning feeling under the weather.  Grey skies, rain...it felt heavy.  I was feeling frustration, and something else, sadness maybe? I felt a kind of bewilderment leftover from yesterday.  Nothing stays the same. Impermanence.

But then what to do on my yoga mat this morning?  I just stepped into my practice.  Nothing I've been doing felt appealing or appropriate.  I've been feeling my way into lovely backbending, upper body opening postures.  Today...I didn't even want to stand up.  All I wanted was to fold forward and to have something catch me.  So I dragged my meditation cushion over so my forhead could rest against its softness.  It's not one of those sort of firm cushions.  It's filled with buckwheat hulls that get more mushy and pliable over time.  I  did forward bends, soft, easy forward bends.
I soothed and supported.  It was short.  It was not effortful in anyway.  I was not fixing.  I just gave in to what was arising in my attention.  Sometimes I say in class, that doing a mild supported backbend can be nice if you're feeling blue.  True.  But sometimes it's nice to just cradle and care for yourself, not wallowing, just being with things.  Letting them clarify if they want to...or not.

Then I just sat a few minutes with some pranayama and meditation with the sound of the rain...and Samputa mudra  said to remind us of the treasures we have within.  And for today...that was enough.

Lost in the details?

I'm currently reading (among other things) Buddha's Brain - the practical neuroscience of happiness, love and wisdom by Rick Hanson PhD. with Richard Mendius, M.D.  It's geeky enough about the neuroscience without being sleep inducing.  Just my speed.   It has a lot of meditation practices to try out in the process of understanding the points being made about the brain. One piece really caught me and I've been using it in my own practice and also exploring it as a teaching tool in my yoga classes.

From the book:
"The methods here focus on stilling the clamor of verbal thought - that endlessly nattering voice in the back of the head.
Be Aware of the Body as a Whole
Some parts of the brain are linked  by reciprocal inhibition: when one part activates, it suppresses another one.  To some extent, the left and right hemispheres have this relationship; thus, when you stimulate the right hemisphere by engaging the activities it specializes in, the verbal centers of the left hemisphere are effectively shushed.
The right visual-spatial hemisphere has the greater responsibility for representing the state of your body, so awareness of the body can help supress left-brain verbal chatter.  Right hemisphere activation increases further when you sense the body as a whole, which draws upon the the global, gestalt processing of that hemisphere.
To practice awareness of the whole body, start with the breath as a whole;  rather than allow attention to move as it normally does, from sensation to sensation, try to experience your breath as a single, unified gestalt of sensations in your belly, chest, throat, and nose.  It's normal for this unified gestalt sensing to crumble after a second or two; when it does, just try to recreate it.  Then expand  awareness to include the body as a whole, sensed as a single perception, as one whole thing.  This sense of the body as a whole will also tend to crumble quickly, especially in the beginning; when it does, simply restore it again, if only for a few seconds....
Besides its benefits for quieting the verbal mind, whole body awareness supports singleness of mind.  This is a meditative state in which all aspectes of experience come together as a whole and attention is very steady."

What I've been practicing with is finding this whole body awareness, not only as a 'formal' meditation technique, but adding it to asana work.   The anatomical details for a yoga posture are important to be sure.  And there's a certain quality of attention and concentration involved. But to take some time in the posture to go global allows in a different understanding of the physical practice of yoga and yokes it to the meditative side.  It is very easy to get lost in the details, endlessly fussing and fixing.  So I do the details and then let them go for a bit and rest in the whole.  As Dr. Hanson says, the attention crumbles, but you can rebuild it and rebuild it.  The experience of the whole of the posture contains, I think, the essence of the practice...not the details.  I think the details are there to find a safe structure on which to hang our awareness. That's my theory.  I'm testing it out.

The photo reference, if you didn't catch it, is are you seeing the forest or the trees? (No value judgment implied).

Quietly, Heart to Heart

There is a lovely practice in the Buddhist tradition called Metta. It is a meditation practice of a lifetime. Whole retreats are built around it. Basically, one offers best wishes in the form of a few phrases to oneself, to someone you love, to someone you feel neutral towards, to a difficult person, and to everyone everywhere. The phrases vary but could be something like...

May you be filled with compassion

May you be well

Maybe you be peaceful and at ease

Maybe you be happy in this life just as it is.

I'd like to offer a "take anywhere" version of this practice. I sometimes this use this practice after I turn out the light and get ready for sleep, or at the end of my meditation practice, before I move into the rest of my day.

I take an in-breath and who ever appears in my mind's eye (no editing) gets a wish for well being on the exhale. I usually shorten the phrase to "May you be at peace" but you can choose whatever you like. Next inhale, next person that arises. The same person may come up multiple times, you may come up yourself. Inhale, let the person arise, exhale, offer your wishes.

Try it for a minute, for 5 minutes, whatever time you have. The practice is ultimately an offering to your own true heart. As the old year rolls over into the new...may we cultivate compassion together, may we be well, may we be peaceful and at ease, and may we recognize the seeds of happiness in this life just as it is.

I'm just looking

Years ago I used to work for the National Audubon Society. I was out one day near Lake Erie birdwatching with some experienced "birders". This very patient gentleman was trying to point out a warbler (of some sort...they sort of all looked the same to me) in the bushes. I'm not that great with binoculars and the bird seemed to be the same color as all the leaves around it but I was really trying to see this bird . It seemed pretty hopeless and I felt like maybe it was time to just move on...so I lied. I told him I saw it. I didn't see that bird that day...but I did see many others and it beat being in the office. By the end of the long day I just wanted to go home and I thought I'd jump out of my skin if we had to stop one more time on the way home to search out yet another bird species.

I love birds. I've learned to look for them in my own way. I don't travel far and wide to search them out. I can only name a couple of birds by their call. But they add to my life immensely. I can't tell you how lovely it is to hear the call of the first Red-winged Blackbird...the herald of spring for me. Or to see the bright red feathers of a male Cardinal against the intense white of the snow in winter.

As a teacher and lover of yoga, I think it must be like this for the people who come to my class sometimes. Me...trying to point out some seemingly obscure but, I think, beautiful thing about the practice. You...trying valiently to see, hear, feel, what I'm saying...but wishing I'd move on. I know that everyone finds something in their practice each time they come to the mat. It might not be what I'm pointing to...and really...that's okay. I'm just hoping to infuse you with some of the love I have for the practice. Learning to see, hear, and feel, you find that the practice meets you where you are. You may find something lovely about a favorite yoga posture or the coziness of a few minutes of meditation...and you may also have those fleeting views of something rare and beautiful.

When it comes right down to it...We're all here trying to see through the leaves. It's all worth seeing...the birds, the leaves, the frustration, the joy, the people you are with, the feel of the day...all of it. Heading off to my yoga mat now to see what I can see.

The Perfect Room

I've been thinking about the space or spaces where we practice our yoga. I have a nice little room at home. When we bought our house years ago, the first thing we did was have a hardwood floor put in one of the small bedrooms. We never finished the floor...its unsealed. At first we meant to get around to finishing it but I've grown to like it just this way. I've painted the space several different colors over the years. Only one of them turned out to be a mistake...a too cold-feeling lilac. Right now its kind of a warm asparagus green. We've got our yoga props and books. Our mats are always out ready for practice on a moments notice. Cats are allowed to wander in and out. Meditation pillows, candles...its a comfortable space for us and we love it.

But in our previous house, we practiced in a loft open to the sounds of the rest of the house, it was a bit dusty too. We once decided we needed to practice in the kitchen because it was the only place without carpeting! That didn't last long.


Over the years I've taught yoga in a wide variety of spaces. One church gymnasium my students were particularly fond of even though it got reeeaaallly hot in there in the summer. But there were great accoustics for "ommming" and lots of room to spread out. There were spaces that were quiet and spaces with street noise. There were spaces in buildings with no other activities but our yoga class and spaces with lots of other classes....including a pottery studio downstairs, private music lessons across the hall. We could sometimes hear the thump of the clay being thrown. We could always hear the music. Have you meditated to ragtime piano? It's an interesting challenge. Then there was the time a year ago where the walls of the classroom were painted a deep red. People were upset. How are we going to do yoga in a RED room?! (We've managed nicely thank you). There was a space on the top floor of an old building with floors so dusty and dirty that you needed to stay on your mat or your feet got filthy.

Recently one of the studios where I teach has relocated with a new owner. It's only been a short time but change is hard and people are struggling to make it feel like home. I've struggled a bit too. But I've come to realize that as we sit in meditation, as we do our yoga practice, bit by bit we will discover the space where we practice is within. Much as we would prefer not to have external challenges to that practice, they can be part of the deepening of our practice. The deepening of our attention can grow in just such challenging places.



As Jon Kabat-Zinn says...no matter where you go, there you are.

Listening

I've just finished "Listening Below the Noise - A meditation on the practice of silence" by Anne D. LeClaire. This isn't a book about how to meditate. It's an exploration of silence in daily life. The author began, on a whim, to spend one day a month in silence. She later made it the first and third Monday of each month. In her book she explores her many and varied experiences with this practice, both her own, and the responses of others to her practice. At the end of her book she offers up some small ways to find more silence in your life.

The only time I almost put the book down was when she mentioned Masaru Emoto, the guy who says that speaking nicely to water changes its structure. Sorry, but I think that's pseudoscience. It added a momentary cringe factor for me. There are enough amazing things in nature without making stuff up. But I kept reading and that turned out to be the only place where I felt uncomfortable with her writing.

From the book...

"I once read that the Inuit and Igloolik have more than two hundred words for snow, and I envy them a language that can encompass the many subtleties of a single idea. I've read, too, that in the Buddhist tradition of Southeast Asia there are twenty-one different words for silence. In my dictionary, few synonyms are listed. Muteness. Stillness. A thesaurus doesn't offer many more. Quiescence, Peace. Wordless-ness. Quietude. Quiet.

But just as there are countless varieties of lilies, there are different kinds of silence, as many as there are intentions and reasons behind it. It can be gentle and peaceful. Risky and brave. Angry and punishing. Thoughtful and wise. Intimate. Loving. Restorative. Reflective. Sacred or profane. It can be used to honor or to shame. To diminish or empower.

How many words would it require to reveal all its multitudinous nuances and intents?

Fifty?

Two hundred?

More?"

Just start to do it...

I'm procrastinating...again. My big plan for the day is to work on my Ayurvedic course homework. And I really enjoy it...once I've started it. But I've already decided that first I need to do my yoga practice (gold star for that one), make the bed, start some laundry, vacuum and wash the kitchen floor (What? this is better than studying?!!)

I went to day one of my friend Daron's meditation workshop on Sunday afternoon. We were asked to write down some mildly unpleasant activities, mildly pleasant, and activities we felt a mixture of both pleasant and unpleasant sensations when doing (or contemplating doing).

It's funny the things that come up. I like washing my hair, but I don't like drying it. I like folding laundry, but resist putting it away. (Just ask my husband who's always wondering where all his clean clothes are...well they are sitting in a nice neat pile on the floor in the family room...that's where).

I enjoy making and drinking tea. I was making a pot of darjeeling this morning. I put two teaspoons of tea in the pot and then I put an extra pinch in...somewhere in my distant past I remember the phrase "and one for the pot". You put in a teaspoon for each cup and a little extra. All alone in the kitchen I say outloud "and one for the pot". So satisfying.

And then there's my homework. When I get to it...and I will...I will become thoroughly engrossed. But it's that starting moment. But here's what I know. In that moment...that precise moment that I actually open the file on the computer that holds my work and pick up my workbook, there will be, I can feel it even now, a tingle of pleasure in the belly, that comes with having begun.


Okay...no more blogging young lady until you've finished your homework!

Equanimity

People come to my yoga classes. Along the way you find out things here and there about their lives. I recently discovered I've had a Columbus Dispatch writer in one of my classes. Jane Hawes asked me if I and my fellow yoga instructors had noticed an increase in attendence that might be due to the stress of the current economy. Her article was published in the Dispatch recently. I don't know how long the link to the article will be available so check it out soon if you want to read it.

It appears that people are seeking out ways to deal with stress in larger numbers of late. And that's a good thing. But it's not like our current melt-down arose out of a lifetime of stress-free living. Anytime is a good time to begin develop strategies for cultivating equanimity.

Like now.

The poet Kabir said...
...enter into your own body;
there you have a solid place for your feet.

Unleashing Creativity

It seems that everyone is feeling an urge toward creativity that is not only about "Art". This is from another wonderful teacher, Edward Espe Brown. He is describing an upcoming retreat. It's another one of those bits that I didn't want to get lost. I'm not going to the retreat so I'd normally just delete the email but there was something about the language that made me want to bring it here.

UNLEASHING CREATIVITY

From Beyond Creation A Guest Appears

A moment arises—not previously

revealed! never before happened!—

Still we aim to get it right,

so we look good.

Or...

could something appear

from beyond creation?

(Wind high in the pines)

Creativity weaves through the fabric

of consciousness—the gateway opens

and closes—we'll look at some of the

pivotal elements which inhabit or invite

the guest to appear.

Doing the same old same old,

Doing what we already know,

Or...

choosing to welcome the

inconceivable, to move past

the familiar to finding out how.

(whose hands are these)

Can we make things behave

the way they should? Come

out the way we want?

Or...

is there picking up what

comes to hand? And

using it? imaginatively...

(soft light through the curtain)

We'll study what awakens our

creative vitality.

(with sitting, talk, walking...)

The weekend retreat is at Green Gulch Farm in California. If you want to be spontaneous, drop everything and go...here's a link.

Relatedness

There were so many bits of wisdom in Sharon Salzberg's book The Kindness Handbook - a practical companion. My previous post on "neutral" was inspired in part by this book. Before I take it back to the library I wanted to post one more quote.

"When we send a neutral person lovingkindness, we are consciously changing a pattern of overlooking them, or talking around them, to one of paying attention to them. The experiment in attention we are making through these benevolent wishes asks of us whether we can practice 'loving thy neighbor as thyself' when we don't know the facts about someone's dependent, elderly parent, or at risk teenager, and so our heartstrings have not been tugged.

When we think of our neutral person, we haven't learned the story of their suspicious mole or empty evenings. We have no knowledge of their inspiring triumphs or their admirable philanthropy, and so we are not in awe of them. We aren't seeing their tension after a disappointing job interview, or their sadness after their lover leaves. We practice wishing them well anyway, not knowing any of this, but simply because they exist, and because we do know the beauty, the sorrow, the poignancy, and the sheer unalterable insecurity of existence that we all share.

Paying attention this way, we learn that even when we don't especially know or like someone, we are nonetheless in relationship to them. We come to realize that the relatedness is in itself like a vibrant, changing, living entity. We discover the gift of caring, of tending to this force of life that exists between us, and we are immeasurably enriched by that."

Yoga on Public Radio

Public radio program "Speaking of Faith" has an interview with Yoga teacher Sean Corne called Yoga: Meditation in Action.

Host Krista Tippet has started her own yoga journey at the urging of a staff member.

Here's what Krista had to say about yoga...

"I believe that the spiritual aspect and essence of yoga — the relationship of the spiritual to the physical experience, the vocabulary by which we understand and process that relationship — will vary substantially from person to person. Like meditation, this ancient spiritual technology lends itself to interpretation and incorporation with many spiritual sensibilities and religious traditions — just as its range of practices are adaptable to any type of body at any stage of vitality or disability. I also see this yoga phenomenon as part of a larger move that we've variously explored towards rooting — or rather, reintegrating — the body into spiritual and religious traditions, from Judaism to Pentecostal Christianity. There is some wonderful, fundamental insight here that many of us are reclaiming from wildly different directions. And as Matthew Sanford still so memorably put it to me, the more completely we inhabit our own bodies with both their strengths and their flaws, the more compassionate we become towards all of life. That's the kind of earthy, reality-based mystery I love."

Meditation on and off the cushion...

I was doing my seated meditation practice yesterday morning and heard a sound like a hammer on wood. Normally, I'd just notice and continue to sit. But there was something about this sound that drew me off the cushion. As soon as I left the room I could tell the sound was outside and not in the house. I moved toward the window in the bedroom that looks into the woods behind our house. And I saw FOUR Pileated Woodpeckers. (Think... Woody, the Woodpecker!) I hear them from time to time but rarely see them, let alone 4 of them. I watched the two males nearest to the house work hard on the two tree limbs they were perched on. They were there for a long time. It was so exciting to watch them since usually any sightings are fleeting. This opportunity became a part of my meditation practice as I felt joy and wonder as physical sensation. Noticed joy as breath. Noticed the difference in the energy of my seated posture as I later returned to my meditation cushion. What a great morning!

This moment is like this

Dancing with Life
by Phillip Moffitt

I've got such a HUGE pile of books next to my bed just now. This one I may take awhile to read because I came across this phrase that just resonated with me so much, I've stopped to play with it awhile. The author quotes buddhist monk Ajahn Sumedho as saying (frequently) "This moment is like this". It really helps me to "understand the difference between skillfully observing a difficult experience from within and unskillfully getting lost in the content of that experience". It actually works really well for any kind of experience. We're not always that great at really diving into the joyful experiences either. We can get caught up in wanting them to last instead of experiencing them "like this".

Space

There are so many ways to meditate. Sitting, walking, breathing, chanting, contemplating, noting, abiding. Lately it feels to me like simply making space. I have a meditation timer on my iPod that goes for 30 minutes. There are three tones from a Tibetan bell to start and two to end. In between is just space. No guidance, no reminders that you're half way through (which some timers have and, personally, I just don't want to know).

The mind isn't just space for all that time. It's helpfully trying to fill the time with planning, with creative projects, with lists, with complaining, with memories. I don't mind. I play with how quickly I notice. Sometimes I'll be well down an inner conversational path before I come back to just space. Sometimes I don't even get a whole word out before...ahhh space.

This space allows me to make space in my whole life. Its not just about clearing out the clutter for 30 minutes (or 5 minutes or 15 or whatever) but about remembering to make the space to love my husband, to recognize that there's a person checking my groceries not just some faceless piece of a process, to be creative with the things I have and not always feel the need to buy something new. Where could you use some space?

I was just talking about this idea of meditation as spaciousness this morning and came across this article about making space this afternoon. I notice these things. When something seems to pop up for me from several sources (inner and outer)...I think, hmmm, this must be important.

Why Bother?

From Michael Pollen's piece "Why Bother?" in the NY Times...

"For us to wait for legislation or technology to solve the problem of how we’re living our lives suggests we’re not really serious about changing — something our politicians cannot fail to notice. They will not move until we do. Indeed, to look to leaders and experts, to laws and money and grand schemes, to save us from our predicament represents precisely the sort of thinking — passive, delegated, dependent for solutions on specialists — that helped get us into this mess in the first place. It’s hard to believe that the same sort of thinking could now get us out of it. "

"Thirty years ago, Wendell Berry, the Kentucky farmer and writer, put forward a blunt analysis of precisely this mentality. He argued that the environmental crisis of the 1970s — an era innocent of climate change; what we would give to have back that environmental crisis! — was at its heart a crisis of character and would have to be addressed first at that level: at home, as it were. He was impatient with people who wrote checks to environmental organizations while thoughtlessly squandering fossil fuel in their everyday lives — the 1970s equivalent of people buying carbon offsets to atone for their Tahoes and Durangos. Nothing was likely to change until we healed the 'split between what we think and what we do.' For Berry, the 'why bother' question came down to a moral imperative: 'Once our personal connection to what is wrong becomes clear, then we have to choose: we can go on as before, recognizing our dishonesty and living with it the best we can, or we can begin the effort to change the way we think and live.'"

There is this idea that many of us have in our heads that everything is connected. We nod knowingly...me too. I've been trying to get it out of my head as an idea and into my life as something that's actually true. I've been trying to do some stuff...changing out light bulbs for energy efficiency, putting together errands so I don't have to drive as much (living in a rural area is not very "green", ironically), carrying my own shopping bags (not just to Whole Foods or Trader Joe's...but everywhere, etc.

But here's another way to think about doing your part for the environment...all of it...everything is connected...

"Stillness within one individual can effect society beyond measure" - Bede Griffiths

My meditation practice feels more and more like it is part of this overall effort to "bother" about the world we live in together. It's not about creating this fake smiling, everything is wonderful, persona...but about delving deeply into these connections...everything, everywhere...and letting that inform what I choose to do in this world we all share.

Smiling

Breathing in, I calm my body.
Breathing out, I smile.
Dwelling in the present moment
I know this is a wonderful moment.

" 'Breathing in, I calm my body.' This line is like drinking a glass of ice water-you feel the cold, the freshness, permeate your body. When I breathe in and recite this line, I actually feel the breathing calming my body, calming my mind.

" 'Breathing out, I smile.' You know the effect of a smile. A smile can relax hundreds of muscles in your face, and relax your nervous system. A smile makes you master of yourself. That is why the Buddhas and the bodhisattvas are always smiling. When you smile, you realize the wonder of the smile.

" 'Dwelling in the present moment.' While I sit here, I don't think of somewhere else, of the future or the past. I sit here, and I know where I am. This is very important. We tend be alive in the future, not now. We say, 'Wait until I finish school and get my Ph.D. degree, and then I will be really alive.' When we have it, and it's not easy to get, we say to ourselves, 'I have to wait until I have a job in order to be really alive.' And then after the job, a car. After the car, a house. We are not capable of being alive in the present moment. We tend to postpone being alive to the future, the distant future, we don't know when. Now is not the moment to be alive. We may never be alive at all in our entire life. Therefore the technique, if we have to speak of a technique, is to be in the present moment, to be aware that we are here and now, and the only moment to be alive is the present moment.

" 'I know this is a wonderful moment.' This is the only moment that is real. To be here and now, and enjoy the present moment is our most wonderful task. 'Calming, Smiling, Present moment, Wonderful moment.' I hope you will try it."

Thich Nhat Hanh from "Being Peace"

This morning as I sat in meditation, I realized that my facial posture was one of such seriousness. It wasn't scrunched up or tense, in fact it was pretty relaxed. But I felt this "attitude" of "this is serious stuff". And then I smiled. Not a grin...just a little smile. And everything got softer and more peaceful.