Vicki MacKenzie, c1998
Biography of Jetsunna Tenzim Palmo. Read this after I read Into the Heart of Life, which was after I got to meet Tenzim Palmo at one of her last US lectures (May 2011).
Found her story to be really inspiring. She expresses such clarity of purpose, resolve, and goodwill. Her path seems to be one she was both destined to take and one that was enabled by her commitment and clear purpose to achieve enlightenment. I am amazingly moved by her commitment to achieve enlightenment as a woman as a way to shift the balance of power within Buddhism and to bring the power of women more fully into the world.
The journey that she undertook to spend her 12 years in the cave was pretty amazing. The time in te cave was a different kind of amazing - challenging, even life threatening, and perfect all at once. (I confess to it all having a certain intoxicating appeal from the perspective of this over-scheduled, deluded existence...)
Some quotes:
“The only problem with bliss is that because it arouses such enormous pleasure, beyond anything on a worldly level, including sexual bliss, people cling to it and really want it and then it becomes another obstacle.”
Her description of the perspective gained after those 12 years is exactly what I had imagined:
“...while I was in retreat everything became dreamlike...one could see the illusory nature of everything...because one was not in the middle of it. And then when you come out you see that people are so caught up in their life - we identify so totally with what we’ve created. We believe in it so completely. That’s why we suffer, because there is no space for us.....Now I notice that there is an inner distance towards whatever occurs, whether what’s occurring is outwards or inwards. Sometimes, it feels ike being in an empty house with all the doors and windows open wide and the wind just blowing through without anything obstructing it. Not always. Sometimes one gets caught up again, but now one knows that one is caught up again......[This is not] a cold emptiness but a warm spaciousness. It means that one is no longer involved in one’s ephemeral emotions. One sees how people cause so much of their own suffering just because they think that without having these strong emotions they’re not real people.”
Thursday, June 30, 2011
Thursday, June 23, 2011
What moves?
"May the sound of this bell dispel greed, anger, delusion, and all of the hardships suffered by all beings.
A week at the Great Springs Temple in PA. Percussion crazed, I get to ring the bell (bansho) most of the mornings I was there. 18 strikes. 60 seconds apart. After each, a full bow and recite the gatha above.
And the world moved....for me; so I guess at minimum I moved.
The crack of the wood against the metal that preceded the resonant thrum of the world's chord must be what did it. Cracking a heart like cracking the shell of a macadamia nut. It took work.
And now I am back home. No bell. Just cracks.
Instead I say "May this practice dispel...." Somewhere around the 10th or 15th bow, the words drop and bones feel the truth of it. It is not MY practice, but this practice, being done not by me, but through me.
Maybe a small flake of that hard shell around the ego is what moves....taking at least one small hardship with it....
A week at the Great Springs Temple in PA. Percussion crazed, I get to ring the bell (bansho) most of the mornings I was there. 18 strikes. 60 seconds apart. After each, a full bow and recite the gatha above.
And the world moved....for me; so I guess at minimum I moved.
The crack of the wood against the metal that preceded the resonant thrum of the world's chord must be what did it. Cracking a heart like cracking the shell of a macadamia nut. It took work.
And now I am back home. No bell. Just cracks.
Instead I say "May this practice dispel...." Somewhere around the 10th or 15th bow, the words drop and bones feel the truth of it. It is not MY practice, but this practice, being done not by me, but through me.
Maybe a small flake of that hard shell around the ego is what moves....taking at least one small hardship with it....
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
She whispered
So this was the first time I have been present for someone's death. 10 months of training in pastoral care just completed, but the focus was on anticipation and change.
JD was in her 60s. Retired early, I think. She was a middle school art teacher and artist (watercolors). Just one living relative of whom we were aware. Her "family" was a network of people from work, the community, and the sangha.
JD was simply kind to me whenever I encountered her. She appeared to be someone who had slowed down - her speech was slower, her body less reliable; but then she’d comment on something - a softly delivered joke, a heartfelt comment on a dharma talk - and I'd understand that she just listened and processed differently.
I am so grateful to have been present today. I wanted to be there in part because I was acutely aware of how relatively little I knew about this sangha member from whom I had received so much goodwill. A woman who always had a kind word for me, who loved when I showed up dressed nicely because I'd come straight from work - unprepared to shift into the dark, simplicity of zen-wear, who asked after my kids and my husband, and who was clearly struggling a bit more in the last few months.
Just last year she completed jukai. I learned today that JD had been unable to do the small stitches that form the jukai robe, each stitch to be taken with a vow - to do cease doing harm, to do good, to live for the benefit of all beings. So others made the stitches, with JD seated close to them, whispering the vow into their ear.
Such is the surprising intimacy of zen practice.
And could it be my most recent prior thought had been to idly wonder why she kept dropping off to sleep in the zendo? Was that the heart condition manifesting itself? Will I ever really get it that saying goodbye should always be full and complete; you never know if you get to do it again.
To the last, she accommodated. Most of us had to leave by 5. The service was done by 3:30 and shortly after 5 she took her last breath. During he service, I felt she heard even if she could not understand the chants. She understood the message - you are not alone, you are part of us all, you are loved, you can move on to whatever comes next. A nurse commented that she usually felt like crying to see such a sweet woman die, but everything felt so peaceful that she simply felt happy for her. The nurse, with joy, urged JD to let go and get "up there" to look after us.
Absent breathing tubes and the sound of machinery, JD was peaceful. Labored breathing slowed; less wildness in her eyes. As I held my hand to her chest, I eventually felt the rough rumble of breathing ease and then stop.
This is how it unfolds. Life, suffering, flashes of joy, struggle, a moment of change, and the course is set, the scene changes so quickly.
Thank you JD for being present, for letting us all in, for vowing in our ears....sometimes we need to be close to hear.
JD was in her 60s. Retired early, I think. She was a middle school art teacher and artist (watercolors). Just one living relative of whom we were aware. Her "family" was a network of people from work, the community, and the sangha.
JD was simply kind to me whenever I encountered her. She appeared to be someone who had slowed down - her speech was slower, her body less reliable; but then she’d comment on something - a softly delivered joke, a heartfelt comment on a dharma talk - and I'd understand that she just listened and processed differently.
I am so grateful to have been present today. I wanted to be there in part because I was acutely aware of how relatively little I knew about this sangha member from whom I had received so much goodwill. A woman who always had a kind word for me, who loved when I showed up dressed nicely because I'd come straight from work - unprepared to shift into the dark, simplicity of zen-wear, who asked after my kids and my husband, and who was clearly struggling a bit more in the last few months.
Just last year she completed jukai. I learned today that JD had been unable to do the small stitches that form the jukai robe, each stitch to be taken with a vow - to do cease doing harm, to do good, to live for the benefit of all beings. So others made the stitches, with JD seated close to them, whispering the vow into their ear.
Such is the surprising intimacy of zen practice.
And could it be my most recent prior thought had been to idly wonder why she kept dropping off to sleep in the zendo? Was that the heart condition manifesting itself? Will I ever really get it that saying goodbye should always be full and complete; you never know if you get to do it again.
To the last, she accommodated. Most of us had to leave by 5. The service was done by 3:30 and shortly after 5 she took her last breath. During he service, I felt she heard even if she could not understand the chants. She understood the message - you are not alone, you are part of us all, you are loved, you can move on to whatever comes next. A nurse commented that she usually felt like crying to see such a sweet woman die, but everything felt so peaceful that she simply felt happy for her. The nurse, with joy, urged JD to let go and get "up there" to look after us.
Absent breathing tubes and the sound of machinery, JD was peaceful. Labored breathing slowed; less wildness in her eyes. As I held my hand to her chest, I eventually felt the rough rumble of breathing ease and then stop.
This is how it unfolds. Life, suffering, flashes of joy, struggle, a moment of change, and the course is set, the scene changes so quickly.
Thank you JD for being present, for letting us all in, for vowing in our ears....sometimes we need to be close to hear.
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