true practice

"You think that you can only establish true practice after you attain enlightenment, but it is not so. True practice is established in delusion, in frustration. If you make some mistake, that is where to establish your practice. There is no other place for you to establish your practice." - Suzuki Roshi


I've always been a good student. One of those pupils who listens attentively, studies assiduously, tries very hard to "get it right". When entering into my sangha, I paid close attention to the forms the practice took, the proper way to open a shrine, light the candles, sit on one's cushion, ring the gong and so on. These forms exist for a reason - they help to create a strong container for the mind to practice in. Strong forms are conducive to deeper meditation. Strong forms create a wide corral for our minds to roam in and then settle. Strong forms can also rub away at the ego like fine sand paper, smoothing out all the quirky ways we like to exert our "selves" into any situation. When related to with an attitude of openness and curiosity, they can really show us where we get stuck, where our hang ups are, what triggers us - in other words, they can be a wonderful antidote to ego.

We have been taking our boys to a famous zendo the last couple of months. They run a very established and wonderful dharma program for children and teens, and after years of wanting to attend, we have succeeded finally in showing up, dragging reluctant, sleepy, children out of bed at a very early hour on a Sunday in order to travel an hour and half into the mountains to participate. The boys enjoy it. Except when they don't. This past weekend was the Buddha's Birthday, and they participated in a wonderful puppet show relating the story of "Sticky Hair" and (in this case) "Princess Five Weapons". The children performed it for the sangha, after first participating in the beginning portion of the celebratory practice, where they offered flowers and water to the Buddha with the full sangha present.

I would like to report that the boys all behaved appropriately in the zendo, that they "followed the forms": standing still behind their cushions, being respectful of the space, joyfully making their offerings, excitedly performing the play. That would have been easy, right? What actually happened was, yes, my eldest behaved appropriately while in the zendo. My younger two sat on the meditation cushions at various times, rolled around on them a bit, poked eachother, pulled some sibling hair, reluctantly offered flowers, and proclaimed at various moments in a loud whisper, that they were BORED. Towards the end of what was a genuinely beautiful ceremony, my youngest pulled me out of the shrine room on the verge of tears, cranky and hungry.

Prior to the play performance, there were several run throughs. All three of my boys at one point or another during the next two hours of run throughs (yes, that is a LOT for small kids), QUIT THE SHOW. As a former actress, I had to fight my urge to admonish them that one DOES NOT SIMPLY QUIT THE SHOW DURING THE FINAL DRESS. My three year old demanded rice crackers for going onstage. My eldest broke down because his 7 year old brother had gum and he did not. My 7 year old was upset when one of the puppets he had been rehearsing with was given to another boy without a role. Much frustration was experienced by all.

They weren't the only children having a roller coaster of a day. When it was finally time for the puppet show to be performed, all my boys rallied, although my three year old insisted I move his puppet for him, rice crackers or no. Not all of the other children did, though. A couple sat out, their individual disappointments not salved. The show went on. The sangha was delighted. The children all smiles (I think). It was all perfectly imperfect.

Isn't that all it ever is, though? Perfectly imperfect? We might have illusions of perfection before having children. We certainly have an easier time performing a task for instance, cleaning a room, completing a thought, sitting in the proper way on our meditation cushion and respecting the forms of a zendo. Children quickly show us how it's all been a bit of a charade though. When have things truly gone completely to plan? We clean the floor and discover the scratch in the veneer. Empty the sink of dishes and catch sight of the chipped plate. Paint the room and see where water has made a small, corrosive pocket. Get the job and discover our manager is unkind, the tasks unreasonable, the coworker a bit weird. Sit silently in zendo and accidentally allow a loud fart to escape. Trip over our feet during walking meditation. Children, because of their energy, authenticity, chaos, show us immediately how silly the entire enterprise of "getting things right" is.

So how do we react to the inevitable mistake? Do we find ourselves getting really uptight? Letting the frustration build and control us? Do we feel shame? Do we rebel? Do we laugh and move on? Do we make it into our practice, as Suzuki Roshi admonishes us to? The zendo is a kind place. The forms are very very strong there. Which is why the chaotic energy of children can be welcomed into it on the Buddha's birthday and allowed to play. Which is why we can notice when our back stiffens and our fingers wag at a child poking his brother. Which is why we can notice tears coming to our eyes when our three year old pulls us out, and sit, and breathe and open to what lies beneath those tears - a longing. A longing not for perfection, but for touching space. That is the irony of tight forms - they create a vast space. But only if we relax within them. Only if we can let go and accept things as they are. Sitting on a hard wooden bench, a wiggly, nursing toddler in my lap, watching the sangha complete their prostrations and chants, I let go. There was the space. There was the practice. There was the perfectly imperfect. All of it. The wiggling kids, the yawning parents, the contained sangha, the wooden Buddhas, bathed in water spooned gently over them by small, sticky hands. All of it. All of it.

parenting without labels

When we are not sure what is going on, we react in fear and start labeling things black and white, good or bad, doomed to fail or destined to succeed. The process of labeling something because we are not sure what it is further increases the illusion of duality. Dualistic mind creates an aggressive scenario because we project a self and “other.” This process becomes a cycle: the heavier the dualism, the heavier the fear. - Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche

Lately I have been contemplating the quote above from my teacher, Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche. The original context of this teaching was the current economic crisis and the fear it continues to generate, but I have been chewing it over in regards to my parenting. In particular, I have been seeing how easily I can become dualistic, both with my own children and with others and their parenting choices.

To become a parent is to make friends with fear. To become a human being is to live with fear of course, but being responsible for another life really intensifies it! Having children really forces one to face the truth that we cannot control things. The world and life are groundless. Our children will get hurt. They will get sick. They will make mistakes. They will hurt others. They will drop out of highschool and run off to Mexico with that other kid we really disapprove of...you get the idea! All we can do is provide them with a strong foundation of love, nurturing and acceptance so that they recognize their own basic goodness and can make that manifest in the world. But that can look all different ways. And they will still get sick, get old if they are lucky, and eventually, like all of us, will die.

Scary stuff. And compounded by the already chaotic daily challenges of raising young children, it is no wonder that we try to push off these truths and our fear around them by constructing some kind of identity that (we hope) will somehow stave off the vagaries of living. This immediately puts us at war with life! It is hard to go with the flow of life when we are constantly trying to stem it, stop it, turn it this way and that. This is how suffering increases and we lose all ease in our parenting.

The dharma tells us that it is always problematic when we seek to construct and maintain any kind of identity, any "this is what I am" storyline. When we label ourselves as being some thing, then others inevitably become something else, and separation is cultivated in our minds and hearts. So, if I decide to call myself an attachment parenting mama, then everyone else either is in alignment with that or not, and of course, whatever actions I take as a parent are either in alignment with this label or out of alignment with it. Always the schizophrenia we impose on the outer world is equally imposed on our inner world! This leads to labeling things as good or bad or with me or against me. Even our children are either with us or against us. We are constantly measuring ourselves, our children, and other parents up, seeing how we all do against the criteria we have created. And then we judge.

And the more I experience this, the more I realize all of this is really just about managing our own fear. Our fear for our children and for ourselves. Our fear of the world. And our continual struggle to deny reality - to try and make things permanent that are impermanent. This is, as the Buddha taught, the root of all suffering. We keep thinking that if we just do things a certain way, we will be safe from life. But what if life wasn't something we had to keep safe from? What if we could really begin to trust in our own basic goodness, and in the basic goodness that underpins the entire world?

As a good attachment parenting mama (lol!), I read Mothering magazine, which is all about natural parenting. In their letters to the editor section, I am always struck by how the majority of the writers list their natural parenting bona fides in the beginning of their letters, as in "I am a breastfeeding, babywearing, bedsharing, cloth diapering . . ." you get the idea. I find it rather exhausting. Just as I find it exhausting when I find myself doing it! Stating our identity seems to close off compassion for other paths. And it can also close off compassion towards ourselves or our children when we miss the mark, when we don't comfortably comply with the parameters we have imposed so strongly on our lives.

We need to make peace with the truth that everything is constantly changing. Nothing is fixed. Our children certainly are not, but neither are we. I often think of the many different things I have called myself over the course of this lifetime, and how they more often than not no longer apply in any way, shape or form! We need to allow ourselves this kind of space in our parenting - the space to be constantly changing, adapting, flowing. This is allowing life to work through us and with us, rather than fighting it. This is opening ourselves to our own parenting path, our children's path, and the paths of other caregivers. We can see more clearly when we aren't looking through our heavy labels. What we see without them is so much more beautiful, joyful, and energetic than with them. We can stop being at war with ourselves and others and instead fill our heartminds with gentleness and spaciousness. This will cultivate our awareness of basic goodness and allow it to flow out of us unimpeded.

To read all of the Sakyong's wonderful talk, you can go here.