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    Working with Chaos

    ByElizabeth

    I’ve had more than one yoga/meditation teacher who has suggested that in order to make true spiritual shifts, it is necessary to pick one path (theirs) and stick to it.  I agree with that up to a point.  If we just stay on the surface of lots of different things, it will be hard to go deep.

    Nonetheless, living in a multicultural nation of immigrants and working in a field where being open to diversity is in my mind a job requirement and having grown up with the multifarious influences of New York and both Jewish culture and Quaker practice, it would be hard to think that sticking to a single-sourced spiritual path could be possible for me.  Better then, perhaps, to go deep by also looking broadly and openly.

    In that regard, though I do not consider myself a Buddhist, I often find Buddhist teachings instructive.   This article by Pema Chodron on working with chaos seems particularly useful for me today.

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    Blogging by Blackberry (after thoughts on discipline and freedom)

    ByElizabeth

    When I pause to think about it–something I try to do consistently with the fruits of technology–it is an extraordinary marvel that I can be telling stories to the world from a little device I am holding in my hand, one that also has let me speak and exchange notes while I am away from home with friends, colleagues, and business connections.

    What I cannot do (more likely because I haven’t yet learned how than it is not possible) is to be my usual careful self when posting entries. I have not done hyperlinks to attrbute my sources, nor have I spell-checked. At home, I would not hit the “publish” button without doing those things.

    Under the circumstances of being away from my regular computer, my library, the ability to check my references, and to provide proper citation, but being brimful with enthusiasm for being with my teachers, colleagues, friends, and the practices while I am at the teachers’ gathering, it seems better to post than not, using the means at hand. I sacrifice some of my usual discipline to share the joy.

    All of life is like that. We may have ideals of what is proper, what are our standards for appearance, for work, for sharing a meal or our homes. When circumstances limit our ability to meet our own standards, it is part of the yoga to see whether the standards are binding us or serving to help us better connect. I believe that we should always strive to be more precise, more technically accomplished, better able to convey a sense of grace and beauty. But that effort should not cut us off, bring us to a halt, disempower us, prevent accomplishment of things. Most of all, it should not deaden a sense of spontaneity of gesture–the part of art and relationship that reveals our true spark.

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    Haiku About An Assignment

    ByElizabeth

    I’m attending via the Internet a year-long series of lectures through the Upaya Zen Center about Socially Engaged Buddhism. On the honor system (the program consists only of watching zoom or YouTube lectures and a Facebook forum with no interaction with any leading the program other than group emails), as part of the year, we are supposed to have a “social engagement” project informed by Buddhist principles of right living.

    Social engagement as an intrinsic element of spiritual practice/observation seems completely consistent with the principle of Quaker practice I was raised with —that of putting one’s faith and recognition that there is good in every being—into how one lives and works. It also resonates with my understanding of the yoga practice of seva (“selfless” service), which I have tried to make a consistent part of my personal yoga sadhana.

    After much intentional and spaciously open contemplation of this exhortation to have a project, and in response to my listening to the lectures and the questions and observations of others listening to the the program, I came to the conclusion that, actually, I could not take on another thing without it being toxic to myself.

    In fact, after 30 committed years, I’ve given notice of my intent to retire from the Federal civil service at the end of the year. I am also doing less volunteer work than I had been prior to the pandemic. For the rest of the year, I am continuing my concerted efforts to share my experience and knowledge to make sure my co-workers are prepared to take on the responsibilities for the complex project that has been largely my responsibility to lead and coordinate for over a decade. That, along with what it is taking for a mindful emergence from pre-vaccine pandemic living, is taking all the energy I can give and still be healthy.

    I continue to budget to make reparations, to speak out, and make other consistent offerings, but am at last releasing the need for measurable accomplishments, rather than feeling compelled to find or produce more.

    As saying that I am doing what I have already been doing has not seemed sufficiently responsive, and after these months of trying to articulate what I mean in a way that would not sound dismissive of the task, I wrote this haiku:

    This is my project:

    Be kinder to myself and

    Also to others.

    PS It is, I am sure, just a coincidence that it is Bastille Day.

    PPS Get out the vote!

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