Who is Your Teacher?

    

     There is a Zen koan that says, “If you meet the Buddha on the path, kill the Buddha.” What the hell does that mean? It means as you are walking around in your life, question authority. If someone tells you they have all the answers, they don’t. The answers are all inside; you just have to uncover the truth within you. That’s what I mean in class when I say, “You’re good enough. You were perfect when you walked in here.”

     Every one of us has to one degree or another, a bit of self-loathing. Our American culture exacerbates this feeling. No matter how big the house is, how fast and shiny the car is, how perfect the kids are, how many handbags we own, we always want more because we think getting more, achieving more will fill the hole inside. Everyone has her own version of the need to fill up; maybe your trip is addiction to food, or shopping, or getting degrees behind your name. The specifics don’t matter. We all have ways to mask our pain, loneliness, and feelings that we just aren’t good enough.

     This kind of thinking leads to poverty issues. We may live in a mansion, with plenty of food to eat and clothes to keep us warm, but we end up walking around like we have no resources. It’s like a beggar struggling for the basic necessities when he has a three carat diamond in his pocket.

     The antidote for this sickness of need and greed is gratitude. Be grateful to everyone and everything. The worst obstacles and circumstances in our lives are essentially a gift given to us to allow us to WAKE UP!

     Today, I’d like to acknowledge my gratitude to my very best teachers, who have shown me the true nature of reality.

Pictured above at the top of this post is the Venerable Zasep Tulku Rinpoche, my dharma teacher. Rinpoche is a Tibetan exile who teaches in the States; I met him about eight years ago in Bloomington and was privileged to take a few teachings from him. Of course, I am immensely grateful for the teachings of His Holiness the Dalai Lama as well. Without his love and wisdom, so accessible to all of us, I’d be totally screwed.

     I’d also like to mention Barbara Mayer and Gloria Karr, my first writing teachers who filled me with passion for literature and expression. Natalie Goldberg, author of Writing Down the Bones is a Zen practitioner who prescribes writing as a means for awakening consciousness. I was able to take a short workshop with her the last time I was in New York, and her insight was amazing.

     I can’t forget my Anthropology professor, Dr. Richard Ward who treated me like a scholar and taught me to think like a scientist, and my idol Dr. Jane Goodall, whose selfless philanthropy has guided me to see the interrelatedness (shunyata in Buddhism) of all beings and our planet.

     Also, a special shout-out to my very favorite yoga teachers, Nikki Myers and Marsha Pappas of Cityoga in Indianapolis. If you want to have the experience of a lifetime, sign up for their yoga teacher training - even if you have no desire to lead classes. I’m also grateful to Hala Khouri, Sean Corn, Gary Kraftsow and Richard Hittleman (whom I have never met, but he gave me my introduction to Hatha yoga in 1986 through the only book I could find in our little community library).

     Every single person who has ever taken even one of my yoga classes is also my precious teacher. I bow to all of you, and ask you to take a moment to reflect upon the teachers in your lives.

"That's Impermanence, Folks!"

“That’s impermanence, folks,” the hippie professor said to the large group of laypeople, ethnic Tibetans, venerable monks, anthropology students, and reporters who had gathered in a large meeting room of the Unitarian church to watch a demonstration of the creation and destruction of a Buddhist sand mandala.

     My three-year-old son had broken free from my firm grasp and bum-rushed the exhibit as soon as the flashbulbs started going off. Like Curious George, he shoved his little monkey hand into the intricate particulate structure and pretty much destroyed the lower quadrant. At once, more than a hundred voices gasping, “HuhhhhhOhhhhh!” My child was shamed by a mob. I scooped him up and took him out of the room so quickly, the hippy was the last person I heard.

      I saw nothing but his confused face and then he was bawling. So apparently I missed the part where all the monks started chuckling. Only the Americans were mortified, and embarrassed as I was, I knew this was really my own fault. I brought a toddler to cultural event and he acted like a toddler. Unlike the times when I brought his father to the symphony and he acted like a ten year old, I couldn’t very well expect a three year old not to get excited and thrash the place. Hell, at that time I couldn’t trust him not to thrust his fingers into cakes at weddings and birthday parties. It was foolish to expect him to be quiet or stationary for more than 20 seconds at a time.

            A group of monks followed me into the courtyard, with one of the event organizers in tow. I vaguely recognized him from other Tibetan events. It turned out they wanted to tell my son it was ok. They had to destroy the mandala anyway; that’s the point. They were happy to have the opportunity to fix it; now the audience could see how the monks painstakingly dropped grain by colored grain of sand into a design that represents the universe. After a ceremony, the monks destroy the mandala with a few ritual strokes, much like my son did, except with a ceremonial bell thingy (vajra) instead of a bare hand.

The grains all get mixed together and dumped into the nearest body of water (which would have been Eagle Creek). The whole exercise is a lesson in the truth of impermanence: All things are constantly moving in a state of flux. Nothing lasts forever. What is now here will soon be gone and so forth.

All of this was conveyed in Tibetan by a robed monk and translated by the professor to my little boy and me. They asked us to come back inside. My son stared at the oldest of the monks the whole time with wide eyes. “Monkeys,” he said. Professor translated, they laughed. The old one reached out his hand and patted my child on the head. “You are a good boy,” he said. Several others followed suit. And then they went inside and put on a fascinating ceremony complete with horns and tall yellow hats. They were from Drepung Gomang.

            Whenever I “f “something up, lose something of importance, thrash a good pair of shoes, discover rabbits have eaten my dahlias, or generally feel as though the rug has been pulled out from under me, I hear that guy responding to the indignant, shaming gasps of the smug American crowd with that pithy little slogan about impermanence. It’s a good mantra. It keeps things in perspective whether the change in question regards a broken antique plate or a broken relationship. All things change. Change is the rule, therefore there is no point in clinging to anything. “That’s impermanence, folks.”

            It’s certainly a mantra that’s gotten a lot of use around here these last few days. On Friday, I discovered an entire sector of the kitty: website was lost. I have no idea how, when or why, but the Peace channel was somehow irretrievably lost in its entirety. WTF! At first I was shocked to find it gone. The crux of our publishing mission disappeared as if it were never even there.

There is no back-up version to revert to. I don’t even have hard copies of what the pages looked like at one time. Reconstruction is my only recourse. “That’s impermanence.” Some of the blog entries were dashed off in situ, meaning essentially there is no record of them even in nascent form in My Documents. “That’s impermanence.” The magazine is losing revenues from the missing pages. “That’s impermanence.” There is a breach in design continuity, and surely a bunch of broken links. “That’s impermanence.”

            The mantra is totally existentialist. It’s absurd. When I’m faced with having to upload all that code, it’s not helping. It’s not illuminating at all. I hate when time gets wasted more than anything. It’s beginning to remind me of the old Mr. Robinson’s Neighborhood sketch from SNL where Eddie Murphy rattles off a list of woes and his probable solution: “Heat don’t work? Kill my Landlord. Got no job? Kill my Landlord, Kill My Landlord….”

     I giggle, knowing I will eventually get over my shock and disgust ("This too shall pass"), quit cussing and put the Peace channel back together. I’ll stop staring blankly at the screen wondering how the hell that happened. Instead, I’ll ask people if they remember what was there, and maybe what they want to see in the new version. I’ll come up with new features and musings, because like Mr. Robinson’s endless complaints, my dharma mantra regarding the changing nature of all phenomena will fade into something else, like “Light a candle, curse the glare!”

Saucha, Dharma & Earth Day

A big part of adopting the yoga lifestyle is recognizing the interdependence of all life on Earth.  Since today is Earth Day, I thought it apropos to address the way we affect our outer space with the choices we make in our homes.  

Saucha means cleanliness in Sanskrit.  A major tenet of yogic, conscious living, saucha means keeping things organized and sanitary for the benefit of all beings. (Saucha is actually one of the niyamas or observances of yoga as detailed by Patanjali.)

     There is a lot of pressure in today’s world not to guzzle down too much gas, not to use the wrong light bulbs, not to wash chemicals down the drain, and to eat organic foods. We all want to do the right thing and help the environment and our own health, but we are American consumers who still have to get to work and school, who can’t always afford produce and eco-friendly products that are three times as expensive as what's stocked on the shelves at the local Walmart.  

     Adopting a greener lifestyle is a noble cause we can all embrace if we approach these cultural changes the same way we approach yoga: we can start where we are and do what we can when we can.  Here are a couple of painless things to get you going:

1. Bring your own bags to the store.  Quit wasting plastic bags already! I particularly like schlepping in old fancy shopping bags. They’re sturdier!

2. You consider fuel alternatives for your car, but have you thought about all the nasty petrochemicals you use around the house?  Petrochemicals are common chemicals in things like laundry detergent. When we use them, we expose ourselves to all sorts of toxicity, and then do it again when we rinse them down the drain and into the water table. Even the local grocery store down the street carries some eco-friendly brands now, so green housekeeping is more feasible now than it was even just a few years ago. 

3. We‘ve begun using dryer balls instead of dryer sheets. These are nubby rubber balls that bounce around and fluff the clothes in less time with less heat. Laundry doesn’t smell like flowery meadows and babies’ heads around here anymore, but I haven’t had a migraine in months since I stopped layering too many artificial fragrances in our home.  *Yes, you’re right, Muffy, perfumes are indeed nasty…you knew all along!

4. Put everything in your office and media center on a power strip and shut that mug down when you aren’t computing.  Unplug the coffee maker, too. Watch your utility bill go down as you stop siphoning “phantom power” throughout the house.

Jane Goodall is a tireless crusader and pioneer for environmentalism and my personal heroine.  She speaks of the affliction of “justmeism,” the excuse we all fall back on when we want to minimize and deny our own responsibility in the very real problems we face as a species.  We all think, “It’s just me; I’m just one person, so what can I do to make a difference?” Or, worse yet, “It’s just me, what’s the harm?” 

This spring, why not clean things up around the house while you bring the spirit of saucha to your practice, gently and naturally? In yoga, intention is everything and you’ll be amazed at the results yielded by even the slightest effort in the right direction.