the amount of need in the world can feel overwhelming when looked at in its entirety.
when we feel overwhelmed, we may freeze up or close down, but the weight of the world isn’t our burden to bear. life isn’t calling us to be saviors. life is calling on us to engage and to love. love really becomes something when it is specific, so we can be very specific in how we engage the world, what we do to benefit, where we offer our help.
we don’t have to do it all.
we do what we can, where we can, when we can, how we can, with who we are.
this is our starting point. beneath the ignorance, the struggle, the neurosis of aggression and grasping, we are simply life manifest and in the tenderness, the rawness of our open heart, we find that we are love.
imagine how different the world would be if everyone were aware of this, that each of us and together are life and are love, if we really connected to this and had faith in it. this isn’t faith in something unseen. when we settle our minds and open our hearts, when we look deeply with clarity and allow space, it becomes evident. we are often too busy to do so and we are often caught up in our worries, our pain, and our storylines or patterns of thought.
the simple, yet profound, practice of meditation – taking our seat, placing our attention on our breath, and seeing what arises without any judgement, criticism or bias – can open our awareness to this profundity.
it’s not a magic pill, we still have hurt, challenges and struggles, but navigating our hurt, our challenges and struggles from a place of connection with life and our love, is a world of difference than trying to navigate this life from a sense of unworthiness or lowliness. some Buddhist scriptures begin with the phrase, “Oh nobly born.” that’s YOU, that’s me, that’s us.
i wrote the phrasing for the art with love preceding life, because so many feel a lack in love and as we connect with our love, we may feel more connected with life. however, as a practice, i like to reverse these as such:
(breathing in)
i am life
(breathing out)
i am love
as we breathe in, we are literally breathing in life – oxygen fuels and sustains our body. we are connecting with life. as we breathe out, we are letting go. this letting go, this allowance and trust is fundamentally an act of generosity and our generosity is our love in action. ~j
we should be careful the seeds we plant. all comes to fruition.
when we practice from a clear and steady mind, from an open heart, from a space of empathy and our own genuine warmth, we bring great benefit. our words and actions rippling out upon the sea of life that surrounds us.
how present this quote feels, especially with the purgatory of this past year. so much unknown, so many changes. simple beauties and joys along with a weighty sadness at times.
there are variations of this quote depending on the translation, but all convey the deep imperative to love the mystery of your life right now with all of its ambiguity, its confusion and questions, not when you think you have it figured out.
the best writing transcends time and speaks directly into the heart of our experience in this life, so much of which is shared.
the book, Letters To A Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke, is one of my favorite books. it continues to speak as it did when first published in 1929 by Franz Xaver Kappus, as it did when it was gifted to me by my dear friend Cynthie and i read it in 1999. Kappus was the young poet with whom Rilke corresponded. Rilke, a poet with a poet’s heart, bearing the deep love, the fragile beauty, and heavy sadness of life.
the book speaks to all lovers, all artists, anyone who is breathing and wants to go deeper and abide in the mystery.
Arkansas denying healthcare and insurance to trans youth.
Georgia, Texas and so many other states with Republican Legislatures enacting racist modern day Jim Crow voter suppression laws.
a rise in aggression and violence toward the AAPI community.
growing income equality and a widening gap between obscene wealth and desperate poverty.
family, friends, neighbors refusing to wear a piece of cloth in order to help save lives.
an unbridled, unrestricted love affair with weapons of death and turning a cold cheek to mass shootings.
a planet sick and suffering from over accumulation and over consumption, wreaking havoc on ecosystems.
this is us.
this is on us.
and it is up to us to engage this world, to use our lives – our words, our actions, our art, our love – to heal the harm and wounds, to rebuild that which has been destroyed, to reduce suffering where we can, and create the reality we want to live in.
we have the hearts, the intelligence, and the raw bravery to do it, if that is what we want.
“The food we eat, the clothes we wear, the air we breathe have all arisen interdependently. We cannot survive alone. We cannot eat, wear clothes, or breathe alone. The more keenly we are aware of this, the more we will begin to take responsibility for the welfare of other beings.”
today is #TransDayOfVisibility. a day when we raise our voices to lift up the lives of trans and non-binary people and also raise awareness about the discrimination they continue to face.
the beauty of life is its diversity. i’m grateful to my trans and non-binary friends for making this life more beautiful, for teaching the world how to love better.
thank you for being.
if we want to be people of love, then this is our path and this is our practice:
to love is to trust the experience of others, to encourage and support them living their life in its full authenticity freely, to stand in solidarity, to speak out, to defend their embodiment of life and love.
there has been an increase in discrimination and violent attacks against trans and non-binary people, especially trans women of color. most recently, Arkansas became the first state to pass legislation to ban healthcare for trans youth. HB 1570 passed both chambers, banning trans youth from accessing and receiving healthcare and insurance coverage. such actions are the very embodiment of cruelty and hate. if we want to be a people of love, we must speak out and work to name and dismantle such cruelty and hate.
yesterday was a “weeds in a vacant lot” kind of day.
one of those days with a general haze of crumminess, where things just don’t seem to flow or work out very easily.
i had the urge to just put on my blinders, run the errands i had to run for my family, and then hide.
i didn’t want to sit with all of that, so i thought about not meditating, but then i saw this quote i had saved from a poem by Mary Oliver. i recalled my aspiration for meditation – to pay attention, to make friends with myself, to open towards all of life…not just the blue iris.
it’s not just the blue iris that calls for our attention, it is also the weeds in the vacant lot, the small stones. it’s the light, easy days, and it’s the dark, challenging days.
our attention is what we have available to offer to our lives. our attention is our presence. when we offer our presence, we are allowing space for gentleness, for openness, for possibility.
this is all we really have, when all else falls away, isn’t it? we cannot control or manipulate our outside circumstances (as hard as we try and strive to), but we can offer our attention. we can offer ourselves. we can offer our open heart.
when i did sit down to practice, grounded, lifted, with my attention on my breath, the thoughts and feelings of the day arrived as expected, but their assumed power was no longer so assuming. not so thick, not so solid, and they didn’t stick around.
we all have moments of feeling stuck, that our experience is quite solid and unchanging, but if we can allow some space and not feed the story, not continuously ruminate on the thoughts and feelings, we may see a bit clearer into the impermanence of these and into the ever changing flow and possibility of life.
our little lemon tree. small and modest and yet it bears beautiful, beneficial fruit!
this is not so different from our meditation practice. even a modest meditation practice, just 20 minutes a day, can bring benefit and bear beautiful fruit within our lives. ~j
The Metta Garden 