Back in June I had a couple of weeks with fewer scheduled work activities. Long walks outside are my primary, first-of-all-before-anything-else heart’s delight; I also enjoyed some gardening, reading randomly, and wandering the web. It’s like rummaging through the piles on the floor of The Garment Factory (huge thrift shop in Boston). Somebody made that? Somebody wore that?
Here’s one on making worms come out of the ground by grunting.
There’s also this clip of young men who have to have spent many, many hours throwing ping pong balls into plastic cups.
And then, how many head-bangs to work out this physics demo?
Or to tap-dance on roller skates?
A man makes three kites at once dance in intricate choreography.
I have found useful sites, like Wordnik, which has all kinds of information on many, many words. Mostly, I find amazement at what we humans and other animals and plants can do, and do. Watching someone make music from the heart, or do something they clearly love, delights and encourages me; and some stories highlight the mystery, like this one about a Turkish painter, born without eyes, who paints (with his fingers) using perspective.
When this man draws, the normal areas of the visual cortex are activated. As we who meditate know, seeing is not only about the eye.
Likewise, a woman without arms uses her feet with exquisite skill.
Stories like these, along with a daily dose of poetry, meditation and simple work, bring light into the dark landscape of the daily news: the picture of the human predicament, and one’s own human predicament, that can so easily make life look like a maze with no through pathway.
I received a letter from Hagar, an organization that provides refuge for girls who have been enslaved in the sex trade in Cambodia. This letter was asking for support for a new program for boys, whose suffering is somewhat different but just as severe. A study of the boys’ situations and needs was attached. It’s grim stuff. Many interviews had been conducted with boys and young men, and from these one theme really stood out. More than one young man sent this advice to others who are living in this particular hell: Don’t think short. A footnote said that “thinking short” was a kind of shorthand for the kind of thinking that leads to suicide. What these young men wanted to tell other boys was to focus, each day, on what they could do to turn their situation towards the possible—-a long-term possible life that might be nearly impossible to picture at the moment.
What especially struck me was that “Don’t think short” didn’t mean focus on some specific long-term goal, but it meant focusing on what you can do right now to be going in the direction of a better life. That makes sense to me in terms of our practice, too. Rather than focusing on “at this rate I’ll never get it, because….,” at any given moment we can choose to look up and greet what is by seeing, not just the walls, but the space within and the great space beyond the walls. Suddenly, something is possible.
This observation came up for me again yesterday evening at the Air Force Academy, where I was holding a service for the “Basics:” incoming cadets in basic training. They’ve been hard at it for a couple of weeks already, and had just learned that “Doolie Day Out”, their chance to go off-base for a day, had been cancelled because of an outbreak of flu among them. Twenty-six of us were packed into our tiny Vast Refuge Dharma Hall, sharing cushions and warm air. I’d been instructed to give reminders about careful handwashing and coughing against a sleeve instead of hands, which I did. We drank a cup of chai in silence. Then we sang our Refuge vows and the Prajna Paramita Heart Sutra. We sang them as call and response, to avoid handing out germ-catching sutra books. And then, with a little guidance from me, they all settled into the….not quite silence, because prayers in Hebrew were sailing across from the Synagogue, and hymns from the Protestants above and the Catholics beside us. There was a bit of stirring about, a bit of coughing, no audible snoring. I spoke a bit about allowing all this to rise and fall within the great field of our attention, noticing the mind’s tendency to make stories and opinions about everything and feeling free to release this, too, into the great spaciousness of breath. I think we only sat about 20 minutes, and within that time, every so often someone would get up and go to the one bathroom available to us. Also during that time, and just as I’d spoken about breath, rain, hail and thunder joined us. And then I invited comments about the experience.
Here’s the sort of thing that came out:
I felt a sort of lightness.
I had the most vivid out-of-body experience!
All of the sudden it was as if my family and home were right here, instead of far away.
Listening to the Hebrew prayers, I felt as if I were there at the time of Jesus’ life.
I was really irritated with the noise until the thunder and rain joined in, and then suddenly I was able to let go and be in the middle of it all with complete comfort.
I felt myself part of the flow of a river.
My thoughts went along for a while, and then suddenly they were gone, and there was just…..
I could feel a kind of strength to practice what you’d mentioned, “When it’s hot, kill yourself with the heat…”
The singing, the rain, the thunder were all completely inside me…and also everywhere around.
I realized that this morning when I was doing push-ups I was practicing this, just as you’d suggested.
I can’t remember the rest, but you can get the picture. I was reminded of Hakuin’s words: “With what you gain from just one sitting, all your crimes are wiped away.” At that moment, when you don’t “Think short,” something else can happen. And that something else is ardently needed by this world we make up.
When we sang our vows, the voice in the room was strong and beautiful.
Half the time I still wonder what I am doing up at USAFA. But it’s the other half.
