Working on understanding Shantideva and others who celebrate 'familiarizing myself' with the nature of my suffering, the context, ... instead of running from it.
As for me, I delight in the every day Way Among mist-wrapped vines and rocky caves Here in the wilderness I am completely free With my friends, the white clouds, idling forever There are roads, but they do not reach the world Since I am mindless, who can rouse my thoughts On a bed of stone I sit, alone in the night While a round moon climbs up Cold Mountain
Sometimes Mary Oliver
1.
Something came up out of the dark. It wasn’t anything I had ever seen before. It wasn’t an animal or a flower, unless it was both.
Something came up out of the water, a head the size of a cat but muddy and without ears. I don’t know what God is. I don’t know what death is.
But I believe they have between them some fervent and necessary arrangement.
2.
Sometimes melancholy leaves me breathless.
3.
Later I was in a field full of sunflowers. I was feeling the head of midsummer. I was thinking of the sweet, electric drowse of creation,
when it began to break.
In the west, clouds gathered. Thunderheads. In an hour the sky was filled with them.
In an hour the sky was filled with the sweetness of rain and the blast of lightning. Followed by the deep bells of thunder.
Water from the heavens! Electricity from the source! Both of them mad to create something!
The lighting brighter than any flower. The thunder without a drowsy bone in its body.
4.
Instructions for living a life: Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.
5. Two or three times in my life I discovered love. Each time it seemed to solve everything. Each time it solved a great many things but not everything. Yet left me as grateful as if it had indeed, and thoroughly, solved everything.
6.
God, rest in my heart and fortify me, take away my hunger for answers, let the hours play upon my body
like the hands of my beloved. Let the cathead appear again— the smallest of your mysteries, some wild cousin of my own blood probably— some cousin of my own wild blood probably, in the black dinner-bowl of the pond.
7.
Death waits for me, I know it, around one corner or another. This doesn’t amuse me. Neither does it frighten me.
After the rain, I went back into the field of sunflowers. It was cool, and I was anything but drowsy. I walked slowly, and listened
to the crazy roots, in the drenched earth, laughing and growing.
Setting an intention is making a decision about who you want to be and how you choose to show up. Over time, those choices become change. Let's begin.
Hello, and welcome to Insight Timers' intention setting challenge. My name is Mark Epstein, and today we're exploring patience. Not as passive waiting, but as the willingness to stay with ourselves, with our own minds, while life takes the time it needs.
Often, suffering comes from the tension between our desire for change, and the pace at which change naturally happens. Especially at the start of a new year, we can feel pressure to change everything at once. But transformation rarely happens on a deadline. It happens in its own time.
We rush, push, and try to force outcomes, because the uncertainty feels uncomfortable. But when we soften around that discomfort, when we let things breathe, we discover a different kind of ease... a trust that life unfolds, whether we strain against it, or not.
To help us integrate this, the intention I'm encouraging you to carry through your day to day is, "Today, I'll let things unfold in their own time."
Let's practice together. Find a comfortable position, sitting, standing, or lying down, and allow your attention to come into your body, just feeling whatever your body is feeling, right now... as it's supported by the cushion, by the chair, by the floor. However, it's being held. Let your body feel held.
Let your breath come and go on its own. Not straining, not pushing. Not trying to make the breath something more or less than it is. Feeling the body, feeling the breath, and then, feeling the mind. Allow your mind to rest in the body, the way the body is resting in the chair, on the cushions, on the floor. And then in practicing patience, what we're really practicing is kindness to our own minds.
Notice How the body does what it does. Notice... how the breath... comes and goes in its own way. Notice how your mind does what it does outside of your control. Thoughts arise, feelings arise. The same way the sounds, or disturbances from the outside, arise. None of which we really have direct control over. All we can control is how we relate to whatever it is that is happening in our experience.
So let's pay attention to how we're relating to whatever it is that we are experiencing right now. Are we chafing at what's happening just a little bit? Are we judging what's happening? Just a little bit? Is there irritation? Is there uncertainty? Or are we... relaxed, open, impartial, accepting... unchallenging for the moment of whatever it is.... that's arising and passing away. Just pay attention to the quality of your mind, not judging it, you know?
But what is the quality of your mind right now? There's a famous Japanese haiku? The old pond, a frog jumps in, plop. The old pond is like your mind. What is it like? A frog jumping in is like a thought, a feeling, a sound, a disturbance. Plop. The ripples that it makes in your mind. Can we allow the ripples? Just to dissipate.
As we sit with open, relaxed, kind-hearted awareness. And before you move into the rest of your day, take another breath and feel the space within and around you. Notice that nothing more needs to happen right now than this. A simple moment of being here. Remember, today, and for the year ahead, today, I'll let things unfold in their own time.
On the next few screens, you'll be invited to set this intention, or your own version of it, on your insight timer home screen. The simple act of seeing your intention reflected back throughout the day is enough to create change. Thanks for being here with me today. And good luck with the rest of the challenge.
Here in Lower Hamlet, wherever you go you see signs with little poems that describe the present moment and help us to be present.
Brushing my teeth and rinsing my mouth I vow to speak purely and lovingly. When my mouth is fragrant with right speech A flower blooms in the garden of my heart.
This gatha reminds us to be aware of what comes out of our mouth and which seeds it waters in the depth of our consciousness.
Another gatha:
Before I start the car, I know where I am going The car and I are one. If the car goes fast, I go fast.
Before I use the car I ask, “Do I need to use the car?” Before I start the car, I am aware of where I plan to go. I am aware that the car and all the passengers in the car are one, and if the car goes fast, all of us go fast. This gatha brings us to the present moment. When we drive, we are aware of how we are driving. We pay attention to what is happening around us. Other cars may be going faster than is advised and may cut us off. We know that person must be in a hurry; maybe they are on the way to the hospital. With our mental attention, we are either watering a seed of anger or watering a seed of understanding, compassion and space.
These gathas help us to practice appropriate attention throughout the day.
The mind can go in a thousand directions But on this lovely path I walk in peace. With each step, a gentle wind blows. With each step, a flower blooms.
Walking meditation is an important Dharma door in Plum Village. Our teacher, Thầy, tells us that if we do not practice walking meditation whenin Plum Village, we cannot say we were in Plum Village. We can say we were in Loubès-Bernac but we cannot say we were in Plum Village. Whenever we take a step, we enjoy taking a step. We practice walking meditation because we enjoy it, and we find freedom. Aware of every step, we are no longer carried away by non-stop thinking. At first we may be able to do this for one step, two steps, maybe three. Then ten, twenty, thirty, forty steps in awareness (mindfulness) and with continued practice we find freedom, peace, calm and clarity with every step.
As the essence of Plum Village practice is walking meditation, you can bring Plum Village home with you. When you walk to your car, when you walk to the bus or the train, wherever you are going, you can be in Plum Village in the present moment, in the here and the now. (I think of Kristin Hamilton's Still Water Sangha's - Takoma Park, MD - talk on Cultivating Patience: June 2025)
Mindful feet, Business Retreat 2017
Once a day we shall practice walking meditation together, generating the energy of mindfulness, of being truly present in the here and the now, the energy of joy, peace, freedom, and healing. One moment of stopping the non-stop thinking radio channel is one moment of freedom and healing. We have a song we like to sing:
I have arrived, I am home In the here and in the now In the ultimate I dwell.
I have arrived in the here and in the now, that is our true address. That is where our true home is. Taking steps in freedom, there is no way to freedom, freedom is the way.
Touching the Past, Creating the Future When we look deeply into the present moment, we can see the past and we can touch it. Today we spend time together in Lower Hamlet, practicing walking meditation, mindful eating, working, and sharing. Tomorrow, today will be our past. Actually, this morning is the past already, five minutes ago is already our past. The way we live the present moment is the way our past will be. This week we are going to create a beautiful past together. Every moment we create our past. The best way to take care of the past is by taking care of the present moment. The way we live our day today grows out of the way we lived yesterday, the day before yesterday, a few weeks and months ago, because what did we do? A few months ago, a week ago, we decided to come to this retreat, something we decided in the present moment that is now the past. All the choices we make today are going to shape our future.
What we pay attention to today waters seeds in our consciousness that will manifest sometime in the future, in our thinking, speaking and doing. If we want to take care of the future, we can only do so in the present moment. When we need to make a decision concerning the future in our personal life or for our companies, we do so in the present moment. We need to be well established in the present moment to have appropriate attention, to make the choice that gives us the future we are hoping to live when it becomes the present moment.
“I have arrived, I am home” is to come back to the here and the now, and by doing so we take care of the present, the past, and the future.
We have another song called “Breathing in, Breathing out.” For those of you who are not familiar with our practice songs, you may think they are a bit silly. But let us look into what these songs tell us?Breathing in, breathing out, I am blooming as a flower. When I first heard this song I thought, “Oh, it’s obviously a child’s song, children must have made this song.” However, when we pay attention to the sound of the bell, and we know how to let go of all of our anxieties, worries, concerns, hopes, wishes and dreams, we are free. We don’t need to be anything but what we are. A flower is not trying to be a flower, let alone a particular flower. It’s just being itself, according to causes and conditions. Why is it blooming? Because it is the nature of a flower to bloom. It doesn’t start coming out of the Earth because it wants to be a full-bloomed flower. It comes out of the Earth because conditions are sufficient for it to do so at that moment. The flower is totally aimless in its being, and thereby it’s the most beautiful it can be.
Fully present for each other -Mindful lunch under the oaks, Business Retreat 2017, Plum Village
Aimlessness, Busi-less-ness Aimlessness doesn’t mean we are just roaming or floating about like a boat on the ocean without a rudder, being thrown hither and thither. No, we bring our mind home to our body, we are fully present with what we are doing, for the sheer joy of doing it. When we are fully present while doing something, it is joyful, it is nourishing. We are our most beautiful self. We’ll have a result. We may even say, “I want to go in this direction.” But while we are doing it, we are not lost in “I want to get there, I want to get there, I want to get there.” With that kind of state of mind, we are not truly in the present moment; we are trying to be in the future, which is not possible. The only moment we can be in is the present moment.To be present, to practice aimlessness, is being our most beautiful self.
This is a retreat for business people. We in Plum Village are also business people. We are aware that it is very easy to be busi-ness. The word already says it. I am a busi-ness person. When we practice aimlessness, we become busi-less people. Isn’t that wonderful? In Plum Village we have organized our environment and our daily life in a way that helps us be busi-less people, to practice aimlessness, to be truly present.
We can get very busy because we want to be Number One. Maybe number one in our corporation, number one as a corporation, number one in life. There is nothing wrong with being number one, somebody has to be number one. There was a nine-year-old child who came home from school. They had had some kind of competition in sports, and the child said, “Mommy, Mommy! I won as the very last one!” What a great insight for a young child like that: “I won as the very last one.” The joy! Obviously that child had done whatever they did with great joy. You can win as the first, the second, the third, the fourth, or the last one. That nine-year old child chose to be happy, and that child is in us. Every one of us has a nine-year old child in us.
Do we want to be number one or do we want to be happy? If we want to be number one, we may be a busi-ness person; if we want to be happy, we may be a busi-less person and still achieve a lot.
I want to go back to yonisomanaskara, appropriate attention. Appropriate attention depends on the object of our attention (what) and the way we look into that object (how). The practice of appropriate attention is very important.
Mental attention is present when there is contact between a sense organ and an object. It is mindfulness that gives us a say into whether that attention is appropriate or inappropriate. We practice in a way that generates the energy of mindfulness so that we become inhabited by it, then we will have appropriate attention with whatever we do. Or if it is inappropriate attention, we will become aware of it and we will know how to turn it into appropriate attention.
So who’s the real boss? With the practice of mindfulness we can take care of our mental attention. Then the seeds of understanding, compassion, inclusiveness, and happiness will grow stronger, and those strong seeds become the inclination of our mind. Through the practice of mindfulness and appropriate attention we create a wholesome inclination of the mind. The practice of mindfulness gives us a choice.
We may or may not work from home, but we can all live from home, bringing our mind home to our body and being established in the present moment, the only moment we have.
Before lunch we will practice walking meditation together. We will enjoy every step we make. Walking on this beautiful planet, allowing gratitude to arise, the healing energy of gratitude for all that Mother Earth gives us. Gratitude for all of us here giving each other support in our practice. Gratitude for our loved ones at home without whom our life would be very different. Gratitude for our colleagues, employees, employers. We will generate mindfulness andbe inhabited by the energy of mindfulness. We will be able to listen deeply, to understand the people in our life whom we consider difficult but who may need our help. Walking in freedom, in peace, we heal ourselves. Then we can offer that peace, that freedom and that healing to others.
Let us enjoy this retreat together. We will hear a lot more about how to take care of ourselves so we can take care of others. We can become a busi-less business person.
I wish you all a happy retreat. Thank you all for listening.
There is also the statement by Thay that we can shape o ur continuation by paying attention to our words, actions and thoughts... this is from July 17 Still Water Sangha, Takoma Park, MD thrusday evening meditation meeting. Certainly this idea of mind, speech and actions as our continuation is in the spirit of patiently attending to (paying attention to) the actions (dishwashing, cleaning, moving mindfully, etc) at hand...
I believe one of the worst ways to live your life is by listening and believing everything your brain tells you.
We are wired for comfort and instant gratification, so your brain will find million ways to presuade you into not doing stuff that will bring rewards into the future.
Why mediate now if it will take few months to reap the benefits of doing so?
Why exercise now if it will take months for results to show?
It is much easier to just lie down and do nothing. That is why we procrastinate doing the stuff we know is good for us.
It takes time and effort to meditate, but, the more you are aware of your automatic thinking processes, the more you are able to change them.
What better way is to do that than by setting a timer and sitting for set duration no matter what excuses your brain come up with?
Live Session Summary, Sunday, October 8, 2023: It was good to be with you for our Live session exploring the theme of patience and its role on the path of waking up. Here are some of the main themes, quotes, and poems:
I began by sharing that the impetus for teaching on patience at this time was that I find in my own life it is both a challenging area of practice and one that provides great opportunities for insight when we bring awareness to the times we get hooked by impatience. Obvious examples are when we are stuck in traffic; when we are kept on hold waiting for customer service; when we are in a difficult conversation with a colleague, friend, or loved one and trying to get our point across; and when we are waiting in line at a store…
When we are in these and similar situations, it’s easy to get caught in suffering—wanting this person, situation, experience, to be different than they are and suffering because we are in conflict with reality, with life. When we are impatient, we can, if we pay attention, see the manifestation of the first two of the Buddha’s four noble truths: suffering (experiencing unsatisfactoriness with the way things are) and the cause of suffering (clinging to wanting things to be different than they are).
The Buddha recognized patience as an essential quality to cultivate if we wish to be free of suffering. It is one of what are called the ten Paramis, or perfections, in Theravada Buddhism. These are qualities of an awakened being that are essential to cultivate for anyone who wishes to be free of suffering. The ten paramis are 1) generosity; 2) virtue/ethics; 3) renunciation; 4) wisdom; 5) energy; 6) patience; 7) truthfulness; 8) determination; 9) loving-kindness; and 10) equanimity.
Cultivating patience—and working with impatience—are at the heart of our practice. Patience is accepting this moment, this situation, this experience, this person, as the way they are. There may be unpleasantness or difficulty involved, but when we are patient, we are not fighting with reality—we are accepting this moment as it is. We can try to change the situation without aversion or resistance, if it is possible and wise to do so. And if we can’t change it, we can surrender to the truth of the situation (Eckhart Tolle: “Surrender is not weakness. There is a great strength in it. Only a surrendered person has spiritual power. Through surrender you will be internally free of the situation.”)
Impatience is non-acceptance. It is resisting what is. We are in a struggle with life, with this moment’s experience… and when we struggle with life, we don’t win out but rather experience unhappiness, dukkha. The good thing about impatience, if we bring awareness to it, is that we can see clearly where we are hooked—the second noble truth—and we can practice opening to the difficult feelings without reacting to them. This leads to letting go and freedom—the third noble truth, Nirvana, or freedom from suffering.
A key to working with impatience is to uncouple the beliefs and narratives in our mind—typically, that this situation/experience should be different—from our bodily sensations and emotions. When we say ‘yes’ to our bodily sensations—for example, tension or tightness, or energies of fight/flight—and the accompanying emotions—such as frustration, annoyance, anger, fear, sadness—and let them come and go without fueling thoughts and narratives about how things should be different, then we can ‘ride the waves’ of difficult feelings and let them come and go.
When we learn to stay with the difficult feelings without resisting or trying to escape them, they lose their power over us. Over time, we can make patience and the willingness to be with our experience our default—and limit the hold that energies of impatience have on us.
Quotes: Lao Tzu: “I have just three things to teach: simplicity, patience, compassion. These three are your greatest treasures.”
Chinese proverb: “One moment of patience may ward off great disaster. One moment of impatience may ruin a whole life.”
Gandhi: ‘To lose patience is to lose the battle.’
Pema Chodron: “Learn to stay. Learn to stay with uneasiness, learn to stay with the tightening, learn to stay with the itch and urge of shenpa [being ‘hooked’], so that the habitual chain reaction doesn’t continue to rule our lives, and the patterns we consider unhelpful don’t keep getting stronger…” (From ‘Taking the Leap: Freeing Ourselves from Old Habits and Fears’)
Poems I shared: ‘Clearing’ by Martha Postlethwaite; ‘There was a time when I would reject those…’ by Muhyiddin Ibn al-'Arabi.
Wishing you a joyful and patient week ahead. I’ll see you for the next Live session next Sunday, October 15 at 9am eastern. Warmly, Hugh 🙏🏻 💜 🌻
Do you have the patience to wait Till your mud settles and the water is clear?
Can you remain unmoving Till the right action arises by itself? —Lao Tzu
I spent fifteen years as a nun in the Plum Village community of Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh (whom I affectionately call Thay, or “teacher” in Vietnamese). Often people would ask Thay what to do when facing big life decisions, like which career path to take, whether to separate or stay with their partner, or whether to ordain as a monastic. Thay would often say, “Don’t try to figure out the answer by thinking about it.” In thinking over a question again and again, we do not generally arrive at real wisdom, but we easily tire ourselves out and get even more confused or anxious.
These deeper life questions can’t be resolved at the level of the mind, but must be entrusted to a different, deeper part of our consciousness. Thay suggests we consider this big question as a seed, plant it in the soil of our mind and let it rest there. Our mindfulness practice in our daily lives is the sunshine and water that the seed needs to sprout so that one day it will rise up on its own, in its own time. And then we’ll know the answer to our question without a doubt.
But we must leave the seed down in the soil of our mind and not keep digging it up to see if it is growing roots. It won’t grow that way! It is the same with a deep and troubling question. We ask our deeper consciousness to take care of it, and then let go of our thinking and worrying about it. Then in our daily lives we practice calming, resting, and coming home to ourselves in the present moment and that will help the seed of our question to ripen naturally and authentically. This process cannot be rushed or forced. It may take weeks, months, or years. But we can trust that the seed is “down there,” being tended to by our deeper consciousness, and one day it will sprout into a clear answer.
In Buddhist psychology this part of our mind is called store consciousness. This is because it has the function of storing our memories and all the various mind states we can experience in latent, sleeping form. For example, maybe you’ve experienced trying to solve a problem or find an answer to something that perplexes you. You think hard and circle round and round in your mind, but you feel you don’t get anywhere. Then you let the question go, and suddenly when you least expect it, inspiration or helpful ideas come to you in a time of rest, and you just know what to do. That is store consciousness operating. It is working on the problem for you while your day-to-day consciousness rests. Store consciousness works in a very natural and easeful way and is much more efficient than our thinking mind. When wisdom arises from store consciousness, it feels right in the body and we no longer have doubts.
But waiting for the answer to arise can be challenging at times because we may really want to know the answer. We may find ourselves feeling deeply insecure and fearful if we don’t know what to do, which path to choose. We worry we will make the wrong choice and we catastrophize about what will happen if we take this or that direction. It’s hard to find our way if we continue to feed this worry and fear. We can recognize that we are not helping the situation and stop. Returning to this moment, anchoring ourselves in our body, we will find the solidity of the home inside of us, which is capable of helping us find our way, if only we let it, and if we can let go of trying to figure out the future in our heads.
Some years ago, I was trying to discern whether or not to leave the monastic life after having lived basically all of my adult life, from age twenty-five to forty, as a nun. During that time, I attended silent retreats at the Insight Meditation Society in Massachusetts, or IMS, for several years in a row that were six weeks or three months long. These retreats were times outside of time, weeks when I could not leave the grounds and take action, but just had to “stay home” with myself. Being in silence, social interaction was limited, and I had the luxury of time to look closely at myself and do nothing. It was an important time of pause, to look deeply, to return home to myself and let my own consciousness take its time to find the way.
When I decided to ordain as a nun at age twenty-five, in my heart I was making a lifelong commitment. So it was painful and confusing to find myself questioning this vow that I had assumed would carry me through my entire life. In that time of transition, I didn’t know who I was anymore and had no idea who I might become. I was in the midst of a process, like the caterpillar that must dissolve itself completely in the chrysalis to become a butterfly. It was terrifying and extremely uncomfortable when I wanted answers and clarity, when I was used to knowing who I was and where I was going.
Joseph Goldstein was one of my interview teachers on these retreats at IMS and when I shared how distressing it was to find myself with no solid ground under me whatsoever, he mentioned Alan Watts’ book, The Wisdom of Insecurity. It points out that when we are clear and sure about what we are doing, we cannot be open to the many other possibilities available. But when we let ourselves hang out in the space of not-knowing, there is enormous potential and life could unfold in innumerable ways. So, rather than avoid and fear this place of uncertainty, we can embrace it and all its gifts.
When we are clear and sure about what we are doing, we cannot be open to the many other possibilities available.
What I found on these long silent retreats was not an answer to my dilemma of whether to disrobe or continue as a nun, but rather the ability to dwell more and more comfortably in the condition of not-knowing. I learned to allow the seed of my question to rest in the deeper layers of my consciousness. I was able to touch peace, joy, and wellbeing in the midst of not-knowing, in the midst of awkwardness and confusion. I learned to let go of fear and resistance right in the midst of dissolving and losing my identity.
By slowing down, choosing to rest back into the uncertainty rather than fighting it, I was able to touch into a sense of space, precisely in moments when it felt like there was no way to keep going, and I would be totally overwhelmed. If we can breathe in and out, putting our mind completely on our breathing, or feel our bodies and put all of our attention on the sensations in the body, we can create that space. We slow things down and let our nervous system recalibrate and center. The external situation may not change, but we’ve changed in relation to our external situation. If we can stop, we have the chance to touch into something deeper than overwhelm. This practice of pausing, or stopping, helps the seed of our question to mature and ripen into the guidance and direction we need.
In a sense, our culture, our society is dissolving. We are collectively entering the chrysalis, and structures we have come to rely on and identify with are breaking down and we don’t know what the next phase will be like. We are in the cocoon. Learning to surrender in our own lives is essential to our collective learning to move through this time of faster and faster change, disruption, and breakdown.
***
MEDITATION
To begin the practice, find a comfortable position, sitting, standing, or lying. Connect with your body and how it’s making contact with the chair or the floor. Allow yourself to rest back in some way and really feel the support of whatever is holding you. . . Every time you breathe out, let your body rest even more into the support of the earth.
Allow your face to soften, releasing the forehead, the muscles around the eyes, the jaw. . .
Let the tongue rest in the mouth. . .
Be aware of the shoulders and as you breathe out, let the shoulders soften. . .
Bring attention to the chest and belly, allow them to release and soften on the next exhale. . .
Notice your arms and hands, with the next exhale let them grow a little heavier, releasing tension. . .
Feel your legs and feet, as you exhale release, soften and let go. . .
Feel your whole body now as you inhale and exhale, allowing the whole body to soften and release its weight even more onto the earth. . .
Now bring to mind some question or challenge you may have right now … notice how you feel about it, and the pull that may be there to resolve it. . . Without trying to figure out an answer or solution, see this question or challenge as a seed you are entrusting to the soil of your mind, down in its depths. . . just allow it to lie there, peacefully, quietly. . . let yourself rest back into the unknown, inviting your body to just slightly, actually lean back a tiny bit. . . let yourself reconnect with the feeling of being held by the earth. . . you can rest on the earth, just as this question can rest in the depths of your mind. . . while it may be scary not to know, there is also infinite possibility here. . . take a few deep breaths. . . feel your body, settling, present. . . and give the seed permission to take the time it needs to ripen into an answer. . . trust your own consciousness to show you the way when the time is right.
You may like to practice,
The Buddha is in me I have confidence
And if it’s helpful, you are welcome to practice it along with your breathing,
Breathing in, the Buddha is in me, Breathing out, I haveconfidence
It means the capacity of awakening is your nature. You can trust in this.
Let yourself breathe and open to this truth of your own ability to access presence, wisdom, patience, ease, even in the midst of uncertainty. You can do this.
Trust, resilience, wisdom is my nature, I have confidence.
I entrust myself, I entrust myself, to the earth, to the earth, and she entrusts herself to me. —Plum Village song
***
DAILY LIFE OFF THE CUSHION
You can bring this quality of resting back into your daily life. When you notice yourself leaning into the future, tensing up, trying to predict what will happen, straining to figure out what to do, whether on your own or with others, see if you can actually physically rest back. Open up the front of your chest, let your arms hang by your sides, and lean backwards slightly. This can support your mind to rest back, release and let be, even for a short moment and to whatever degree you are able.
Do not try to save the whole world or do anything grandiose. Instead, create a clearing in the dense forest of your life and wait there patiently, until the song that is your life falls into your own cupped hands and you recognize and greet it. Only then will you know how to give yourself to this world so worth of rescue.
This poem caught my attention for its brevity and simplicity while conveying a profound message. Although I agree the world needs saving in so many ways, I am continuously struck by how inadequate I feel and am in the face of her suffering. Yet, I cannot believe there is nothing to be done, that I have nothing to offer.
So I resonate with what Postlewaite is suggesting, and what I have heard from other, wise poets (David Wagoner, Derek Walcott, David Whyte, Mary Oliver and more). Stand still, make a space for yourself, wait until the song / that is your life / falls into your own cupped hands / and you recognize and greet it.
And then, as she says, you will know what your gifts are and how to offer them to this needful world. This world so worthy of rescue. And I might add, it probably won’t be grandiose, affecting millions. Instead it will affect one other person, perhaps two or three if you and they are lucky. But those worthy people will be better for receiving your gifts.
The song that is your life – have you heard it yet? Are you listening?
