Impermanence has its up side too

Years ago, my daughter’s father & I were in a custody battle. It WAS indeed quite adversarial, & oh how I suffered. I suspect my daughter did too. And — it occurs to me now, for the first time, maybe her father suffered too. Hmmmmm………….

Luca was living with him at the time, & this was very hard on me. She had always lived with me before (The Dad & I were never married, so WE never lived together) & the daily life of “parenting” was gone for me. Her dad had always been a good-enough father to her, but they had never lived together before, & he had never been involved in the day to day-ness of raising a kid. His & my egos were heavily engaged (which is undoubtedly where the adversarial nature of the proceedings came from!), & a power struggle we had never had previously was raging. One of the things that was beyond awful for me was that he would restrict the communication between Luca & me — she was only 11 at the time, & kids then did not have their own phones. Not being able to talk with her daily, several times, was just killing me. This was some time before I had learned that we can choose our responses, & I suffered. Mightily.

I completely ‘forgot’ during this time that meditation would be helpful, & as I didn’t then have a regular practice going, it didn’t even occur to me. I walked a lot which somewhat eased the stress, & spent time with friends. And I vented to whoever would allow me, though I realize now that holding on to & constantly re-inventing the arguments is NOT helpful, healthy or healing in the long run. That is just being caught in one’s own shenpa, & is the ego’s stealthy guerrilla actions to keep control. I found myself singing ‘The Star-Spangled Banner” all the time, & thought I was going crazy, until a friend pointed out: It’s a triumphant battle song.

The thing that was the most helpful to me though, which kept all of this — my personal heart ache, the battle between parents — in perspective, was to stroll through cemeteries. Especially through the children’s sections. Knowing that these infants, toddlers, teens were dead gave me cause for gratitude — these hundreds of children had died of illnesses or accidents, or in the case of at least two, been murdered, while MY beloved child was only living with someone else. Knowing that all those parents would probably give anything for another year, another day with their long lost children made the limited visits with Luca truly precious. And, even though The Dad & I were locked in this war, I was still able to view his agenda with a measure of compassion — I could see that what he was trying to do really was based on What He Thought Was Best For Luca. It grew out of his real love & concern & caring for her. So, I couldn’t hate him. And I could not indulge in too much bereft victimization, not when I regarded the pretty little headstones of generations of dead children. Knowing that our lives, & our time together, & our time separated, was impermanent made it all much more bearable — In this way, I could remember to say for it all –The Dad’s & my acrimony, the separation from my kid – “This too shall pass”. The gift of impermanence, even within its challenge, is that none of it was going to go on forever. Change would come. And in that change lay every possibility, & I could breathe, & feel kinder toward The Dad, toward the universe, toward myself.

And, after a few months, with the court’s judgment going the way I thought was best:), we all got through it. Luca came back to live with me, she & her dad kept much the same relationship they’d always had, & he & I maintained a civil accord. After all, I could be gracious in “victory”, knowing that the sense of winning a battle also would pass away.

Related articles

• She-Who-Brings-Light (mindmindful.wordpress.com)
• Want to cheer yourself up? Go for a walk in a cemetery (talesfromthelou.wordpress.com)

Discontent & Liberation

john-will-lamacchiaspace.blogspot.com

I am experiencing feelings of great discontent. I almost feel “bereft” — not in the sense of having lost a loved one. Rather, in the sense of not having anything I want. And the strange, & I suspect pathological, thing is that I find myself trying to hold onto these feelings. I even picture myself later in the day indulging in them, fomenting their growth, sinking under the burden of them. I am veryveryvery familiar with such Discontent, having walked with & nurtured it much of my (previously) unexamined life.

Now, I understand about “impermanence“, as Buddhist dharma teaches. (((I mean, I seek to fully understand it:))) I know that it is the Way of Things that they come into being, then pass away. To rise, then to fall. And I do my best to embrace this — it is, afterall, The Way, The Flow, The Tao. It is just the nature of reality for change to occur. Embracing it then, is more “wise” than to resist it. I especially want “impermanence” to happen when I’m experiencing those things I don’t like, the bad things that I do. not. want. (And I suspect this is true of most of us:)

But, I also do not want to be in the habit of registering, & staking a claim to, what is Good, & what is Bad; what I Love & what I Hate. Instead, I want to cultivate the dharmic quality of equanimity, of being clear & unclinging in the face of everything that comes & goes. I want my responses to be NOT clinging to the Good, & NOT avoiding or destroying the Bad. I want my response to all that is to be dispassionate, not judging it either way, not getting caught up in it. In the face of what is Wantable, & what Is To Be Avoided, I want to be UNattached to the storyline that goes with each. I want to not be taking sides in the Goodness or Badness of everything – I just want to see it, & respond to it clearly, with equanimity. Such dualistic thinking is so hard to avoid falling into though. It is, afterall, the way we’ve all been taught to think. And …… (there’s some of it right there……….!!) The problem with dualistic thinking being this: When we don’t have the Good, & want it, we suffer. When we have the Bad, & don’t want it, we suffer. Having to process, & deal with, all the suffering thus created takes up so much time, energy, effort. It keeps us bound up in itself.

This is the dukkha (suffering) the Buddha taught in the first of his Four Noble Truths. Equanimity is being free of setting ourselves up for all that suffering. It is one of the Four Immeasurables, which are essential vehicles for traveling the road to true love & compassion for all sentient beings.

from http://www.acerminaro.blogspot.com

I want this dispassion, this equanimity, so that I can remain responsive to This Moment, rather than being hijacked by the story that goes with whether something is Likeable or Dislikeble. When I (we) get caught in the storyline, we make the <<<thing or situation or idea>>> solid, we give it WEIGHT, we try to make it real. When we give something this reality, what is really happening is this: We are accepting the illusion of something’s Worth or Not Worth, when the only worth it has is what we assign to it. The only REALNESS of something, its Importance/Not Importance, its Goodness/Badness is the reality we give it. The only worth anything really has is that which we agree it has. For example, this very prevalent idea that being thin is Good, having curves is Bad – This idea reigns, yet only in the context of contemporary ideas of (female) beauty. In Renaissance Italy, they would’ve worried about Gwyneth Paltrow. Yet, because most of us collectively agree that this idea is REAL, the manymany people who do not conform to these standards end up suffering in some way or another.

So, why the discontent, MY discontent? Hmmmm, it’s just the label of Discontent that I’ve assigned to a host of feelings, making myself believe that all is not well in my world. And making myself believe it so strongly that I do not even want to let go of it — I don’t even want the possibility of it Not Being True!! (Here, I’m imagining the ‘thinking’ of my silly ego—>) If I give these feelings so much weight, & make them so solid that they become true — REAL — then maybe I don’t have to do anything about them. And I won’t need to attend to choosing the changes that are most beneficial (see how hard it is to avoid dualistic thinking?!?) & I can wallow, nurturing my sense of being powerless, & ineffective. Which will have the bonus affect of creating even more discontent!!

See how great I am at creating my reality (of being discontent)?? This is the way most of us create most of what We Believe To Be True. <<<Whatever>>> may or may not be inherently True & Real, but because we believe it to be, we act as if it is, & suddenly we can’t imagine it any other way! And to question it is to question our entire, underlying world view. Few really want to do that.

Whew. I’ve managed to talk myself into another episode of As My Head Wraps Around It ………. maybe some day, with my powerful ability to create reality, I’ll become free of assigning Good & Bad to everything, I’ll face the world & all that comes with it, all that rises & falls, with equanimity. THEN, I’ll be free of the suffering that I create — for myself & others. I’ll be liberated from suffering ……..

THIS is the liberation the Buddha seeks to point us toward. And it begins within our own minds.

Related articles

• Equanimity: Calmness in the midst of Chaos (drschiffman.wordpress.com)
• Why Do We Suffer? (alwayswellwithin.com)
• First two noble truths (painisanillusion.wordpress.com)
• The 3 States of Discontent (maitreyabuddhistcentre.wordpress.com)

That’s all there is

I wrote a little while ago about a deflated kind of feeling I often get after “doing” something, or making some kind of achievement. It feels the way I imagine the air escaping from a balloon might feel. I’ve often wondered what is going on with my mind/ego that I perceive this kind of let down ……… is it from having too many expectations? I wrote then that I don’t quite know what to make of this ……………..

Some of the folks who read that post left comments — so I think this feeling resonates with others.

Small moments, Great gifts

In writing an email to a good friend this morning, I had given a lengthy, but not very specific reply to her question, “What do you want?” Now, I do KNOW what I want – I know exactly what I want. I kind of have tiers – the most ideal, the most reachable, what I’d like ‘anyway’, what would be perfectly acceptable as stepping stones …….. I  know what I want in terms of Life Work, I know what I want in terms of places to live, in terms of HOW to live (& — yea me! — I mostly do this :) It’s not “not knowing” that’s my problem!! It’s the getting there that I seem to struggle with.

But, later in the email I was describing the weather here (I’m in OK, she’s in WA) – we usually describe the weather of a day, how it influences what we do, how we feel about it, especially during seasonal transitions. My grandmother used to do that when she wrote to our family when I was a little kid, & we all kind of made fun of her – “Ooooh, she starting off ANOTHER letter talking about the TREES?!” What we didn’t get then, & what my friend & I have now,

Lurking, lurking ……………….

I feel so much fear lately …………. anxiety, uncertainty. Now, I know, I KNOW that this is much of what the human condition really IS –> the underlying reality, the REAL reality – which most of us never twig to – is impermanence, changeability, lack of predictability & the security we want to believe it gives us. It is my belief that much of what we silly humans do comes from our attempts to deny to ourselves the reality of this reality. We scurry about doing our best (mostly) while trying to evade the clutches of this ontological fear, always lurking, lurking …….. Economic woes add to the uncertainty, of course, & aging, & violence, & alienation – more monsters in the closet. And there are a number of professional bloviators who make very nice livings from fomenting any number of fears.

Life, Meet Death

A lovely being died today. Of the sweetest temper, & universally declared a “beauty,” my dad’s old, old dog, Dixie, ended her sojourn in this world. Sadness hits me hours later, dissolves, rises anew, & again fades out ……….. it, like a life itself, doesn’t last forever, impermanence in action.