By katmeow
During one of the toughest times of my life, I discovered pain so deep, sorrow so suffocating, and emptiness so vast, that I did not know what to do with myself nor where to go. During this time in my life, I tried to grasp on to anything and everything. Just to make it a little more bearable, so that I may continue on another day. Another day was a chance to find my way again.
Like all people, when in the thick of dark days, I felt hopeless and lonely. There were days that I didn’t know how to wake up. That I didn’t want to wake up to feeling all the pain inside me. And when I was awake, I felt like it was all a nightmare, and all I wanted to do was go back to sleep, so that I may wake up again to a different reality.
Looking back, I realize that those days were what shaped me. Those days, and the seemingly small efforts, is what made me who I am today. Those days are the only reason my heart beats fully, openly, and vibrantly.
In the midst of darkness, I found a soft light. It was glowing soft and barely visible at first. But as I got closer to it, it begin to fill the spaces in my heart and wrapped around me like a warm hug.
This light was yoga, and the most loving and compassionate teacher who opened my heart to it. In all my life, I’ve learned to only forget and push the pain away. I’ve only known how to destroy myself in hopes of destroying the pain until I got sick of it and give up on that also. Or until I’ve destroyed myself so much that there was nothing left to destroy.
Yoga taught me to be ME. Yoga taught me to ask myself what I needed. Yoga taught me to pay attention to myself, my inner workings, my heart, and taught me to nurture myself. Yoga taught me to heal.
I remember one particular evening after Ashtanga practice, my teacher was reading a passage from a very worn book. She always read a passage from this book, along with a few others, after Savasana, while we are sitting and meditating, before we chant Aum to close our practice.
It has taken five years for me to find this book. I couldn’t remember exactly the title of the book, but I knew it was something like “365 Prayers”. I have browsed and bought many daily meditation books, but it was never the one.
It came in the mail today. I immediately searched for the passage that my teacher read to me that day. The passage…her soft voice…it all brought so many emotions to the surface as I sobbed in class after she finished. I sobbed with no shame. No worries that the other students might be judging me. I had held it all in for so long, having it all weigh down my heart, that I could not help it. That I welcomed the relief. I sobbed and released the pain and sorrow within. For the first time, I felt hope. I felt like it was okay for me to be sad. I didn’t have to pretend that I am okay. I was not. It was all okay to feel what I was feeling. And in the end, after I get through it, I will be able to love and open my heart again. For the first time, I allowed myself to feel the pain fully, and see it as something helpful, something that reminds me I am human and will keep my soul and heart alive.
“When sorrow comes, let us accept it simply, as a part of life. Let the heart be open to pain; let it be stretched by it. All the evidence we have says that this is the better way. An open heart never grows bitter. Or if it does, it cannot remain so. In the desolate hour, there is an outcry; a clenching of the hands upon emptiness; a burning pain of bereavement; a weary ache of loss. But anguish, like ecstasy, is not forever. There comes a gentleness, a returning quietness, a restoring stillness. This, too, is a door to life. Here, also, is a deepening of meaning –and it can lead to dedication; a going forward to the triumph of th esoul, the conquering of the wilderness. And in the process will come a deepening inward knowledge that in the final reckonin, all is well.” —A. Powell Davies
I hope that whoever reads this can let it touch your soul. Remember that, no matter how dark the days, how heavy your heart feels, all that pain and sadness will not last forever. Just as we grieve when happiness and ecstasy comes to an end, we can find hope that pain and sorrow will have an end as well. Our first instinct is to push it away, turn our spirit away from it, because we are afraid. But pain and sorrow is all part of the human condition. It is what makes us our heart feel alive, just as happiness does. And without pain and sorrow, how do we truly understand happiness and love? When we can accept it is okay to feel all of those things, is when our heart truly lives.
By Jingpa Lodu
There is a kingdom called Sukhavati, the Realm of Bliss, a land of light and magic, prayer and chanting, knowledge and compassion. Within it there dwells a young prince and he wears regal bejeweled gowns, but they are no more distinguished than the next prince’s gown. His crown shines in the light of the butter lamps, but no brighter than any one of his brother’s crowns. He feels simple, he feels unremarkable.
Tonight he sits, quietly watching his tea steep. The steam rises off the decorated clay pot, and the tea leaves slowly fall into the boiled water. His cup is ornately painted with a scene of bamboo and wind. He closes his eyes, clears his mind. Focusing on nothing he realizes that he is not alone. From across the cavernous temple echoes the sound of an old monk, slowly chanting to himself. His tones are careful and sure, he has practiced for an eternity to learn the correct intonation, to make a true and correct offering.
Is that my lot in life? The young prince wonders to himself. Am I destined to be an old man, alone, chanting to the empty temple in the middle hours of the night?
The chanting echoes one last moment, and a deafening silence encroaches upon the young prince’s ears.
“Sit tall, my young prince,” the old monk says quietly sitting directly before the young prince. “Breathe a full, deep breath into your chest. Within your chest beats a heart that has the energy of a million suns at its call. In your veins there is a liquid flowing that is more precious than any molten metal, any stream or river. Why do you not know the worth of you?”
Ashamed, the young prince looks down to the tea. A second cup now sits besides his. The second cup is a simple bamboo cup; no gilding, no paint, no jewels. Plain in every way.
“My cup is simple, you are right.” The monk closes his eyes and pulls his hands into his thick winter robes, protection from the night’s chill. “But does it not hold the tea as well as yours? Does it not serve me as well as your cup? And if it is lost to me, or if it were to lay broken on the ground at my feet, could I not find another to take the place of this cup?”
The young prince watches the monk for a timeless moment. He is familiar, he is known to the young prince, and yet he does not know who he is.
“Monk, does your cup not long to be adorned? Does it not wish to sparkle in the light, with jewels and metals? Does it not want to be noticed?”
The monk pours tea in to the prince’s cup, and then in to his own. He lifts his cup to his mouth, and breathes in the aroma of the tea.
“Does the lily wish to be a rose? Does the lion wish to be a snow leopard? What if I told you that there was once a flower that grew strong and tall out over a running stream, and that this flower wished to be a fish swimming in the water?”
The prince closes his eyes, seeing this flower in his head, and realizes that the flower is the fish. The fish eats the flower and so then the flower becomes one with the fish.
The young prince opens his eyes to tell the monk, only to find himself sitting alone in the temple. He looks down and sees his cup is gone, and in its place there is only a simple bamboo cup.
By Jingpa Lodu
Chenrezig, four armed Avalokiteshvara
It’s noisy in here, my son is playing the Xbox with his friends, my daughters are all screaming and laughing while they run around the house, Barbie’s in hand. My wife is sitting close to me, a book in her hands, and Brian Eno is providing some ambient sounds from my laptop. This is not the ideal environment that most people would seek for meditation, but this is my reality.
To me, meditation is not just sitting still, focusing on my breath and lifting my consciousness; but rather meditation is a breath to breath occurrence that can take place in every situation. I have no cave to disappear into, no retreat cabin on a secluded lake in the high hills. What I do have is a suburban backyard and a house full of exuberant life, and that is okay with me.
My meditation practice is a simple one: I focus upon my breath, I murmur Chenrezig’s mantra, and I become all compassion as the form of Chenrezig slowly becomes real, one atom at a time, until he is fully formed before me in my mind’s eye, and then I assume his form. In the end, if I retain the effortless focus needed, I am Chenrezig, the Buddha of Compassion.
I do this practice while sitting beside my friends and family, and most are never aware. I wear a small wrist mala on my left arm, while on my right arm there is a 9 inch tattoo of his mantra, Om Mani Padme Hum. The mala is seldom touched while I chant the mantra in my head, but it is there as a reminder for me, a touchstone that I can reach out to if necessary. I had the tattoo done last summer, I wanted something that was an outward reminder to me that in all things I can observe my practice. I love it when people ask me what it means, as I get to mention the mantra to them, and I know that most have never heard the mantra spoken before in this incarnation.
Some ask me why I chose to focus upon Chenrezig, I answer with an old proverb: Practice one deity, find all, practice all, find none. I was drawn to Chenrezig, perhaps by karma, through my lineage, Karma Kagyu. Chenrezig may well be the most widely known Buddhist deity, second only to Gautama Buddha himself. Chenrezig is his Tibetan name, while in India he is known as Avalokiteshvara, in China he is the female emanation known as Kuan-yin, and in Japan she is known as Kannon. Chenrezig’s name in Tibetan means ‘One Who Looks with an Unwavering Eye’ demonstrating that he, no matter in which emanation, is always watching over all sentient beings.
In the end, that is what I strive to be, a compassionate soul, seeking to aid all I encounter while living within the tenants of Buddhism; The Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path.
