Wonder, Mystery, Awe, Gratitude

and i would suggest some words for us wonder mystery awe gratitude let me read you a poem from mary oliver one of our great dharma poet laureates this morning two mockingbirds in the green field were spinning and tossing the white ribbons of their songs into the air and i had nothing better to do than listen i mean this seriously in greece a long time ago an old couple opened their door to two strangers who were it soon appeared not men at all but gods it's my favorite story how the old couple had almost nothing to give but their willingness to be attentive and for this alone the gods loved them and blessed them when they rose out of their mortal bodies like a million particles of water from a fountain the light swept into all the corners of the cottage and the old couple shaken with understanding bowed down but still they asked for nothing but the difficult life which they had already and the gods smiled as they vanished clapping their great wings whatever it was i was supposed to be this morning whatever it was i said i would be doing i was standing at the edge of the field i was hurrying through my own soul opening the doors i was leaning out i was listening and of course she writes about that story i think it's from ovid of baucus and philemon the two in that cottage and how they were blessed in a different way by the gods but they were blessed because they gave this extraordinary gift the gods apparently had gone to many other houses you know how these myths work and kind of in the form of asking for food asking for some something to be taken care of and they were turned away and then finally at this door this old couple welcomed them they became like rumi wrote in that poem you all know so well they became the guest house to welcome each visitor and they offered what mary overlord describes as the great gift which is the gift of attention when somebody asks for a little attention it's actually not a small thing it's what makes the gods smile when we're actually able to pay attention in that way it lets us see something entirely different so when my beloved trudy was young she told this story when we were teaching together yesterday or the day before when she was a young mother and her daughter was two and a half years old she was living in geneva near her parents her dad worked for the who was one of their top doctors for the you know health of the world and her daughter got very sick with the most virulent form of meningitis went into a coma if you can imagine and was in the hospital for almost two months and toward the end of that time when it got as bad as it got she coded which simply means that everybody has to rush to the side of that person because they're not sure they'll make it and trudy described sitting there with this little body of her daughter that she'd been sitting with for weeks and living on a cot next to her in that hospital praying worried the way a mother only a mother could she said and i saw all these people the nurses and the doctors and the people trying to put needles into her tiny little veins and then all of a sudden she said the room filled with light like that cottage she said and i who never really thought about god or what god was she said i saw god and it was those nurses those doctors those people at the bedside and even as we speak there are hundreds of thousands of acts of generosity and goodness billions of them around the world where we are tending one another as human beings and as a monk every morning when we would come into the dharma hall still in the dark before dawn and light candles and do our morning chanting part of the chants were a blessing chant of thanks and gratitude for the food we had for the garments we were given to wear for the shelter of our place for the community around us that we might remember every day this gratitude and then we might then set our intention and dedicate ourselves from all that's been given and part of these chants were really a reflection to sense that we are part of a deeper order of things doris was a 50-something single mom with three teenagers and and a budding career but she was plagued with anxiety one of her daughter's best friends had committed suicide another was struggling with her sexual identity she is a mother was full of worry full of fears and indecision and panic she said when i learned about mindfulness it touched me it made sense so i went on a retreat the silence and the police were blissful i think about that leaving the three teenagers and going off on retreat ah thank you no decisions to make only to be present and kind to myself what came first was a subtle change in the perception of who i am i realized my heart had atrophied i'd held a lot of fear and pain inside which prevented me from giving love to myself and others i practiced a gentle acceptance of aspects of myself that i'd rejected and now felt grateful to know this gentle opening over the days left me less caught in suffering i began to trust myself being fallible and human and yet so much more then what i call the little miracle happened i was on a slow mindful walk totally quiet and then i disappeared there was no one only vast silence in the wind it became a day of joyful amazing freedom and now i know that i'm so much bigger than my fears some days i can still feel that vast dance and others i'm still standing on the sidelines but all i have to do is unfold my arms and step forward into life and i'm free again in a moment we can shift our identity and step out of what's called the body of fear we can release what we've carried when we were as we can be so loyal to our suffering and become something bigger many years ago in the late 70s i was invited to the manager foundation and one portion of meninger foundation was a group that was studying altered consciousness and weird things and of course they invited me you know that's how it works um and it was all the meditation people and the shamans and that sort of thing and we had our conference and sharing and all the things that you would expect in that sort of a gathering and then one of the people who was there was a man named mad bear and mad beer was an iroquois medicine man and we were each invited to give teachings i gave some bit of a talk and guided meditation and madbear said i can't give teachings in here come with me and he led us out the door to the outdoors of kansas huge skies and fields of corn of course but vast vistas and we stood there in a sort of a circle a rough circle in the fields nearby and then he began to make a prayer and my gosh he went on for a long time that prayer i kept thinking when is he going to finish he's praying and praying and it went on and on it went on for like 45 minutes and as i stayed with it and listened i began to feel something so different it wasn't a prayer it was his gratitude for the people and the animals and the plants and the insects and the creatures of the sky and the sea and the air and the water the fire and the earth and all their joyful exertions that bless us every day and he gave gratitude to the care and labeler of a thousand generations of ancestors and elders that came before us on that land and other lands and the earth and gratitude for our safety and well-being and whatever health we have and gratitude for our friends and family and community and then he got very particular and he went down to the earth gratitude for mother earth for holding us so we don't fly off into space gratitude for that which lives in mother earth for the web of life under the soil the worms and the rhizomes you know and the wood wide web of the trees sending their sugar to their offspring into the other trees which we now know about gratitude to the birds oh he did the little birds first you know that would come and then he did the great birds and the gratitude for the animals of that land for the buffalo that were still there in our imagination even when we couldn't see them gratitude for the clouds and the sunlight and by the time he was done it was as if he'd done this long practice of loving kindness and mindfulness and mystery of this earth and we all went back inside slightly stoned and happier than when we'd walked out and connected with one another the unseen world my dear friend sylvia borstein colleague at spirit rock said that her main practice at one point had become just saying thank you to whatever arose thank you thank you like the poet says thank you dark though it is and i sat with her she told me that and i challenged her and i said thank you to everything she said yes i said sylvia how about the holocaust because she had lost family in the holocaust she got very quiet she looked up and she said no thank you and there was something wise in that it even had a thank you there your gratitude grows in tibet and vajrayana practice you pray for suffering grant that i may have enough suffering that my cold or defended or frightened or shamed or grieving heart can become the great heart of compassion gratitude for our tears a kind of humility and grace i think about the movie of john lewis the great elder who recently passed who worked for tirelessly for racial justice and he called it the movie was the title he called it good trouble and i think that's what the tibetans pray for may i be given good trouble and i found when i sat last week as i do each time and get quieter that my own personal tears became after a while what's called the tears of the way not the tears because we've had our own personal griefs and losses which i have had and so have you but the tears that connect us and so there i was i have a tiny little writer's cottage up in the hidden up in the trees above spirit rock fortunately has a heater and running water so i can kind of stay there and it was wonderful to be there and my mind started to get a little bit quiet i got a bit more aware and as i would get quiet i would also see my personality kick in and when i was first in the peace corps learning getting prepared to work on these tropical medical teams in the mekong river valley they gave they gave all of us a thai name a name and tie as i was learning to speak tai and these teachers looked at me and they just they called me mr doing because i was always doing something and playing and so there i was sitting feeling loving kindness and vastness and my mind would kick in and it had ideas and plans and things that i'm going to do and i'm on these boards and i you know i'm working for um immigrant rights and i'm a board of this huge climate change thing and i'm involved in a you know a project that's trying to change the way technology is you know working in a healthy way and all these kind of things mr doing and then i just had to say oh there he is there's jack you know kind of bow and say yeah he's done some pretty good things but that's not who i really am but it's nice i get this incarnation it's actually a pretty blessed when i get to do some good things but i need to hold it all and as i let myself quiet then actually deeper tears came and they weren't about me they were the friends whose child died of a overdose you know and the people i know in communities of color that have been hit so hard by covid and the tears for the loss you know of the rainforests and then one day a peacock came and i haven't seen peacock spirit rock until this year but i guess once we got out of the way they decided they were going to come and visit and it came right up to my cabin and kind of pecked on the door a little bit while i was sitting and said thank you thank you for the marvelous visit and little by little there was a shift of not only holding the mind which does its thing you know in the personality the body my body which was tenser than i'd remembered or felt when i got there but when i sat still it reminded me and gradually it unwinded and mostly there was just a shift not just of a vastness but also a shift of love that all of it was fine that all of it was in intended as a human being to be part of our incarnation in some way to be held with understanding dear friends the buddhist texts begin oh nobly born you who are the sons and daughters of the awakened ones do not forget who you really are do not forget your true nature and so we have these practices you have them i have that we share them and they open us to our true nature they open the heart to hold the entire world mindful loving awareness and compassion and of course that all these studies the 8 000 papers and studies from the neuroscientists of the last few decades on these trainings they explain as my friend dan siegel neuroscientist called it that one of the gifts is expanding the window of tolerance like roomies guest house again learning to teach tickets sorry learning to treat each guest honorably to receive what life offers us with some sense of gratitude here's the deal you got a human incarnation like me it will include majestic suffering overcome all bitterness because you are not up to the magnitude of the pain that was entrusted to you said the sufis like the mother of the world who carries a certain measure of that cosmic pain in your heart you're called upon to meet it in compassion and not self-pity and it has to be this way if there's birth there has to be death if there's light is also dark if there's a beginning there's an end if there's gain there's loss this is called duality this is incarnation pleasure and pain joy and sorrow praise and blame it's what we are it's what manifests out of nothing into a world of form and emptiness trouble somebody asked sorba life is trouble he said this is the first noble truth of the buddha you can't avoid suffering this is dukkha this is suffering but suffering is not the end of the story this we know too the man was my age but looked many years older he was an army veteran he was also homeless cold and hungry i could see he tried to wash up before coming to the social services department to ask for help his face and hands were clean but his clothes were filthy though he claimed not to have had any alcohol that day the smell of it seeped from his pores i wanted to get him into rehab and i asked if he was ready to come in off the streets no ma'am he said all i'd like is a few dollars some bus tickets if i can get sober enough they'll let me into the shelter across town that shelter had 50 beds cots really the homeless were admitted at night and forced out at dawn to eat breakfast in a nearby charity 50 beds and nearly a thousand homeless just in this part of the city winters here in northern california mean cold rain and mud even though this man and many like him slept under bridges to keep dry the dampness penetrated everything his clothes in the bedroll he placed on the floor smelled moldy the pages of the book he carried were swollen i asked him how many times he had tried rehab two or three he said long time ago maybe it's time to try again i explained i'd had a client who'd gone through the program seven times before it took beside i said we're months away from warmer weather what else have you got going on i watched his face as he considered my offer i thought i saw a flicker of hope in his eyes followed by a shadow of doubt he'd tried bahar before it had been hard and possibly hard so he was living on the streets finally he lifted his head and looked at me i reached for the phone shall i i asked he barely nodded yes and an hour later i handed handed him over to a recovering alcoholic also a veteran who would drive him to one of the best rehab facilities in the county come visit me when you graduate i said as they left i barely recognized the man when he came into my office six months later so tall and handsome smelling like the outdoors and holding a huge bouquet of flowers with your own good hearts you are asked to learn to trust to do what martin luther king jr said to turn the fatigue of despair into the buoyancy of hope in traditional cultures this trust is learned through initiation it's part of every wise and traditional culture deliberate initiations of facing danger or death in some way to find something deeper and you all know the stories of the maasai you know sending a young man out with a spear to kill the first lion and come back acclaimed in the village as a man the mayans had these amazing initiations for men and women the boys who were sent out one of the tasks they had was to come back into village and steal the the grandmother's cooking pot and the women in the village knew they would be coming back and all had sticks to beat this person it was really a tricky thing to be able to get the pot i mean all kinds of initiations you know and i think about my dear friend maladoma somme who went through a whole series of very powerful initiations as a youngish man in his 20s and then again and i said well these initiations they're supposed to make you a man or prepare you for something or a woman fully said what do they really prepare you for and he laughed and he said when you complete an initiation it prepares you for the next initiation and that's how life is you know one of the famous inuit shamans sent a young woman who had many visions out to become a shaman like herself and put her out in a little igloo on an ice floe for 30 days with a bit of water and one small dried fish she said i kind of died in there as you can imagine she had her visions she said i died a little that was her phrase but we all have to we all have our initiations if we accept them carl free durkheim the zen teacher writes the person who really being on the way falls upon hard times in the world will not as a consequence turn to that friend who offers them refuge and comfort and encourages their old self to survive rather they will seek out someone who will faithfully and inexorably help them to risk themselves so that they may endure the difficulty and pass courageously through it only to the extent that a person exposes themselves over and over again to annihilation can that which is indestructible be found within them in this daring lies dignity and the spirit of true awakening maybe maybe out of our political gridlock and suffering some new capacities will be born out of this dark night maybe we'll move from independence to interdependence from self-centeredness to thanksgiving i like this poem by heather altfiedel altfeld although i changed it a lot but she wrote a poem about all the ballots the last of them there waiting to be counted think of them shoveled into piles like old snow i imagine them in the late night of those rooms lingering in the smell of yesterday's lunch in the tepid air with the breath held back by masks the ballots talking among themselves about the ludicrous folly of humans who should be counting the vanishing whales and tigers who should be counting the mountain gorillas and orangutans in the almost lost ringtail lemur and the gopher tortoise who should be counting the children behind bars who should be voting for phone lines demanding a raise in the minimum age for kindness demanding a vote on the statutory limitations on human cruelty a referendum to redeem our cities from an endless migration of sadness and despair call it now she ends call it for the rivers the trees the rocks call it for the rain who knows far better than we how to become a fierce and gentle blessing vote for the goodness touching us all reflect for a moment as you listen when did you find trust what awakened it in you that sense of the indestructible the inviolable you have it you know when did you find trust dear friends the last piece of what i'd like to say we're all at the crossroads all of us and the crossroads of this moment that has infinity the reality of the present the eternal now what will we do at the crossroads who are we what's true is that we're never alone there's a story of a young pious nun who used to go into prayer raise her eyes pray and pray and then came to the mother superior and said i can't find god i don't know where to find god and the mother superior looked back to her and said you haven't find god my dear because you haven't looked down it's like truly seeing god in the bodies of those nurses and doctors everything is waiting for you writes david white the great mistake is to act the drama as if you were alone to feel abandoned is to deny the intimacy of your surroundings put down the weight of your lowness and ease into the conversation the kettle is singing even as it pours you a drink the cooking pots have left their arrogant aloofness and see the good in you at last all the birds and creatures of the world are honorably themselves everything is waiting for you when i teach and when people bring up the sufferings and struggles and difficulties in their life the shame they carry or guilt for not doing enough for the world the addiction in their line of family the death of a child or a parent having a new baby instead of being just joyful they're overwhelmed i'll ask them what have you learned about how to handle this what have you learned from this and often the answer something good and then i turned to the group and i say what have you all learned and a kind of magic happens because the room becomes wise it's not me or some teaching is the shared hearts of everyone together and the room becomes wise and they remind you from their hearts that you belong that they've been through it too they remind you that your being is enough that you are enough we've been training for this difficult time for many years you know there'll be more difficult times as there have been but we've been training to do this and as human beings we've been training for thousands of generations through pandemics and earthquakes and floods and difficulties and hurricanes and cyclones and loss we've been training i love the story of thomas merton when he went on his last pilgrimage which was to india and southeast asia to the lands in the buddha when he met with the dalai laman various other sages he went to palo narua which is an ancient temple in sri lanka and a huge cliff in poland arua a marble marble stone had been carved into these giant buddhas with huge faces a whole cliff and he said he stood there and gazed at those faces and to him it was the most moving work of art he'd ever seen because in those eyes in those faces represented bringing alive he saw the eyes of infinite compassion and the wise heart that rejected nothing that understood it all and whose response was emptiness vastness and boundless compassion the words of the buddha they're those who discover they can leave behind destructive reactions and become patient as the earth unmoved by fires of anger or fear unshaken as a pillar unperturbed as a clear and quiet pool this is who you are i like to say go look in the mirror you look in the mirror and you notice you've aged remember how i teach about this i do it myself losing fur in some places getting extra fur in other places sagging and wrinkling in some ways you know as my dear beloved friend wes the dharma teacher and you know comment com comic commentator on life says the hard parts become soft and the soft parts become hard you know and all these weird things of aging happens it's just how it is but there's a strange thing as you look in the mirror and that is that you don't necessarily feel much older you know that like there's the body aging but actually i don't feel that so common and that's because it's only the body that's aged in that moment of gazing in the mirror you are becoming the one who knows what aj called the witnessing the loving awareness the mindful loving awareness itself that steps out of identity with the body and rests in the vastness of consciousness and says um it's getting a bit older that body isn't it just how it happens and there's an understanding in that moment you become like the buddha you become the awakened one who sees with the eyes of understanding compassion you become grateful as you open gratitude mercy when you look with mindful loving awareness a mysterious love for it all the whole of human incarnation the full catastrophe as zorba said yes he had it all and he danced and he loved it and when a baby's born we all go oh baby baby and hold it and you know that new baby smell and that incredible feeling of this little being that's just popped out of good heavens her his mother's body and become here i am another human being on the planet amazing so much love for babies that come in we have and when someone is ready to die and we're fortunate enough to be with them we hold their hand as they're ready to pass as a gesture of the only thing that matters a gesture of love we start with love we end with love in fact that's what we what you are it is who you really are you are loving awareness itself so take time to be quiet in this little holiday as best you can walk in nature sit meditate to your loving kindness or your compassion or whatever practice it is the sweet oil that eases the hinge to the gate into the garden inside you can always go there says the poet it is time for thanksgiving so reflect for a moment maybe let your eyes close just for a minute i ask you what are you most grateful for and what gives you trust in these difficult times where have you learned trust and what gift are you longing to give to the world [Music] so trust your good hearts you know it doesn't take very long just a minute or two to get quiet and listen and when you do it's called a so bat that sufis call it a dialogue with the heart when you ask the heart will answer