what is your story?

“The difference between misery and happiness depends on what we do with our attention.”
-Sharon Salzberg

If you can pay attention to your mind during the day, to where you are placing it, to the thoughts running in and out, you will discover something. You will discover your story. It is the thought you turn to again and again when you are feeling hassled by things, when your back is up against the wall. You probably turn to it even when you are feeling pretty good about everything, happy even. In those cases, it is usually a kind of nagging little fear that will raise its head. When you are really stressed out, or trying to get something done, your children out the door, the dinner ready, whatever - going forward with your agenda - and it is not happening easily - the eggs fall out of the fridge and break on the floor, your youngest poops his pants as you are getting him in the car seat, you get the phone call saying you haven't gotten the job- your story might even slip right out of your mouth, verbalized for all to hear. What do you say to them, to yourself?

With the last months being so stressful for us, full of so much heartbreak, I have found my story slipping out. It came out this morning in the seemingly simple task of getting my three year old and my 20 month old out the door to the library. I can't even remember the series of events that made this outing seem akin to climbing the Himalayas barefooted, but after yet another delay caused by some act of typical toddler behavior or potty learning adventure I said, aloud, "I just can't catch a break."

It is the same sentence I said aloud to my husband in the days after learning about my miscarriage, as I tried to prepare for my three year old's party, and a dozen eggs slid from their perch in the fridge and broke all over the newly mopped floor minutes before guests began arriving. "I just can't catch a break."

It is a sentence I have been repeating to myself for what seems like all of my life. "I can't catch a break, I can't catch a break, I just can't catch a break!" With meditation practice, I finally noticed it, finally really heard what I have been spending years telling myself. When I was home with my parents last month briefly, I heard the same sentence and its variations uttered many times by my father. I doubt he has ever really, truly noticed this story flying from his lips with such regularity.

We all have our particular story. Often, it is a story we first heard from our own parents, or perhaps it was given to us by another authority figure or maybe we came up with it all by ourselves. In any case, it doesn't serve us. It isn't true. It is a story, just that, and since we have been writing it, we can also rewrite it.

It depends, as Ms. Salzberg says, on where we place our attention. When we hear ourselves telling our particular story to ourselves or to others, we can stop. We can notice what is going on with our bodies, our breath. What are we feeling? Where are we? What is actually happening in this particular moment? Things as they are do not conspire against us, although that may be how we feel. Things just are, true, variable, moving, changing, vivid. If we drop the story, we may actually really see, really perceive what is actually happening in any given situation, what the phenomena is truly communicating to us. The world is not for or against us. Things and beings are all dancing, shifting, arising and ceasing in an enormous interconnected dance. What are we choosing to tell ourselves about it? It is important where we put our minds and what words we choose - the story we tell. Can we recognize it as a story? Or do we call it the truth?

When we sit in meditation practice, we notice the tricks we play on ourselves, the wild tales we tell that keep us hooked, deceived, yo-yoing up and down. The more we sit and just let those stories go, not feeding them, not pushing them away, just letting them flow through and continually dropping them, dropping them, dropping them, the more space we create and the more we can laugh. Laugh at what we have been telling ourselves for so long.

Byron Katie has a powerful book of her work entitled "What Would You Be Without Your Story?" It is full of dialogues between her and different students, all with a powerful story that they have spent many years placing their minds on, again and again, with great emotion and intent. In the simple conversations with her, these stories fall apart, get flipped on their heads, and the people become so much freer. They no longer believe them.

This is what I am working on this week. Noticing my story. Catching when I am telling it to myself or others. Dropping it. Touching it. Asking myself, "Is this really true?" And placing my mind again on the present moment. I don't want to give this story to my children. I would rather they tell themselves the vivid truth of basic goodness, again and again, rather than this lie of "I can't catch a break."

wonderful reminders

I often find myself returning to the amazing dharma book "Radical Acceptance" by Tara Brach. Ms. Brach is a compassionate, insightful and wonderful teacher - I really can't recommend the book enough. I was looking at some old interviews with her the other day about her book, and came across this wonderful teaching, which I am reprinting in full, because it is just so good :). This is her response to a question about working with depression and anxiety, or other painful emotions. These gateways she discusses are powerful tools to use in our daily life and practice, and gifts we could give with great love to our children. Enjoy:

We suffer because we have forgotten who we are and our identity has become confined to the sense of a separate, usually deficient self. All difficult emotions-fear and anger, shame and depression-arise out of this trance of what I call false self.

I’ve found that whenever I am really suffering, on some level I am believing and feeling that “something is wrong with me.” Over the years I’ve been drawn to three primary gateways for awakening from this trance. In the Buddhist tradition they are referred to as the three refuges:

One (called “sangha”) is loving relationship-both live contact with loved ones and also meditation on the love that’s in my life. In the moments of remembering love, there is an opening out of the sense of separate self. For me, reflecting on love has included prayer to the beloved, to what I experience as the loving awareness that is my source. When I feel separate and stuck, that loving presence might seem like it’s apart from me and “out there.” But by reaching out in longing and prayer, I’m carried home to the loving presence that is intrinsic to my Being.

A second gateway (“dharma” or truth) is taking refuge in the present moment. The training of meditation is a gift as it has helped me to pause, wake up out of thoughts and contact my moment to moment experience. When I am no longer running away or resisting what is happening inside me, I reconnect with the space and compassion that has room for whatever is going on.

A third gateway (“buddha” or “buddha nature”) is turning towards awareness itself. Most of the time we are paying attention to the foreground of experience-to our thoughts, feelings and sensations. What we are missing out on is the background of experience, the formless dimension of Being itself. By asking questions like “What is aware right now?” or “What is knowing these sounds?” or “Who am I?” we begin to intuit our own presence or Beingness. The signs of this presence are space, stillness and silence.

For myself and so many I’ve worked with, becoming familiar with this formless dimension of who we are makes it possible to open with love to the changing expressions of life within and around us. It allows us to make peace with living and dying, and to live our moments fully.

Wishing everyone connection with your own Beingness today and every day. Much love to you all - you are all Buddhas!

you deserve love

"Treat yourself as your own beloved child." - Pema Chodron


I wrote a letter the other day to my mother, who is slowly, slowly dying.  She has a very hard time speaking now, so we can't really talk on the phone.  I have been wanting to write her a letter for quite awhile, before it is too late to tell her that I love her, that I am grateful for the nurturing she gave me, which now runs like a thread to my own little ones.


There is also a thread of neurosis that runs through to them, from my own mother and father, and their parents, and their parents, and on and on down the line to the very beginning, wherever that may be.  It's up to me to continue weaving the thread of compassion and nurture, and cut that of neurosis, again and again as my children grow.  It's very hard some days.  Other days, it is easier.  I am calmer.  Clearer. More present.  I can see when the  taut thread of aggression, shame or resentment begins to peak out.  And on the hard days, the thread seems to slip from my mouth, and there I am, centuries of habitual patterns pouring out onto my wee ones' heads.


Then I need to regroup, think "fresh start" and begin again.  Come back onto the path.  Regret, remediate and renew my aspiration to transform.  Notice I don't say "to do better". I think this whole "doing better" business just hurts us.  It seems to reaffirm our doubts about ourselves - that we are somehow messed up, flawed, damaged, need improvement.  It's not that we need to improve - we need to uncover.  We need to stop believing the stories we tell ourselves.  We need to see through our confused thoughts and rest in the basic goodness, sanity, joy and wisdom of our true natures.  We need to believe, really believe that basic goodness is who we are.  All that other...stuff...it's temporary confusion.  Like the clouds in front of the sun on a rainy day.  The fresh wind of insight or compassion blows - and there is the sun again, brilliant and strong.


When I really get stuck in "needing to do better" or too tangled in that thread of neurosis, I need to rock myself in the cradle of loving kindness.  I need to treat myself, as Ani Pema says above, as my "own beloved child". It is so hard to be patient, kind, loving when we are unable to be any of that with our own, dear selves.  One of things I wrote in the letter to my mother was that I have always had a very hard time loving myself.  And I thanked her for loving me, despite the many challenges I presented her with, despite the many times I must have been really, truly hard to love without reservations.  We all deserve that kind of love.  Most of the time, we look to others to give us that all encompassing, compassionate, non-judging love.  We look to lovers, to parents, to teachers, to friends, even, sadly, to our own children.  No one else can give it to us.  We need to give it to ourselves.


I am still learning how to do that.  It starts, I have found, with gentleness.  With compassion.  With forgiveness.  With knowing that falling off of the path is as much a part of it as walking it straight and strong.  The important part is getting back on.  The important part is knowing that every other human being has felt and thought and probably done all those things you think only you are bad enough to have felt, thought or done.  The important part is knowing that there is no such thing as a perfect mother or father.  That we all do the best we can in every moment.  That children are resilient.  That to aspire to transform that thread of neurosis is the first step to transforming it into nurture.  That just to notice that thread of neurosis is the first step to liberation.  That your basic birth right as a human being is goodness, joy and sanity.


My mother is unable to hold me in her own arms - not because I am too big, but because her's are too weak.  She is unable to tell me she loves me, because her mouth and throat muscles don't work anymore, or at least not very well.  So, I working on holding myself, rocking myself in kindness, whispering sweet words of love.  It seems that after I do that, it is even easier to do the same for my own children.  The thread of nurture seems to grow so much stronger, truer, lasting.  I can see it spool out, into their hearts, carrying centuries of compassion and gentleness.

Beginner's Mind

"In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert's there are few."
So taught the Zen master Shunryu Suzuki, and it is a lesson I have had to learn again and again as I stumble along the everyday path of awakening. Having a baby is a profound teacher of beginner's mind- from labor and birth to the actual caring for and raising up of children, we realize repeatedly that everything we think we "know" often doesn't work or isn't true for this birth, this child, this situation, this family, this moment . . .and is instead an obstacle to truly experiencing things as they are in all their beauty and magic. When we let go of what we "know" and simply open to the present moment, to our baby, our child as he/she actually is, then possibility happens. What seemed overwhelming or unsolvable becomes workable and we can breathe again. Tears turn to smiles. Frustration transforms into a silly song. Beginner's mind allows us to just be with our child, waiting for him to tell us what he actually might need, rather than what we think he needs.

Beginner's mind happens when we let go of our expectations and our agenda. This is hard to do. I often fail at it! It means noticing when we are pushing what we think should happen onto the present moment, not allowing any breathing room for anything else to occur. When we notice we are doing this, when we are busy being "experts", we can pause. Just that pause can stop the momentum of expert's mind, and allow the grace of the present moment to peak through. We can allow our baby or child to communicate with us - because we are actually present to receive the communication, rather than deflecting it with our preconceived ideas. This in turn allows our babies, our children to trust us. Beginner's mind softens our hearts and helps us open to our children. Our baby crying becomes a necessary communication rather than a frustrating annoyance. The toddler's tantrum becomes a strong reminder of the power of frustration, and we can compassionately give her the safe space to vent. We can allow ourselves and our children simply to be. The more we create that sacred space, the more joy will arise in our daily parenting. So, I remind myself each day "beginner's mind".