I am here for you

That is the title of this beautiful talk by Thicht Nhat Hanh, given yesterday to children and families of his sangha at Plum Village in France.  I love hearing all the babies and young ones crying and babbling as he gives his lovely teaching.  Watch it with your own little ones.

stumbling along

"The path is personal experience, and one should take delight in those little things that go on in our lives, the obstacles, seductions, paranoias, depressions, and openness. All kinds of things happen, and that is the content of the journey, which is extremely powerful and important." - Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche

I just wanted to update a bit on my last post. Last night, after I posted it, my youngest proceeded to wake up every hour on the hour wanting to nurse back to sleep. When I finally asked my husband to please take him for a bit so I could get some rest, my little one screamed and struggled so violently for me in my husband's arms, that he vomited. When my husband put him down to clean him up, my babe ran down the hall to my bedroom and banged on the door screaming until I got up, picked him up, and nursed him back down. At 2:00 a.m.

So, was I happy and cheerful about this turn of events? No, I was not. Was I mindful? Well, I was exhausted. At first, I was not mindful. I was just overwhelmed with fatigue, and a bit of resentment mixed with tears. I cried for a good ten minutes along with my babe, and went onto Facebook and posted as my status update a simple "ugh". Because that is how I felt. I didn't feel at peace with what was happening. I felt utterly defeated by it.

And that is ok. I noticed. I noticed that I felt defeated. I noticed that I was spreading this feeling of defeat into the wider world through updating my Facebook page (hangs head in shame) and that I was having a hard time keeping the view of basic goodness. In the noticing, my tears turned from tears of frustration to tears of compassion, compassion for me, and for my poor little boy who just cannot sleep through the night, even at almost 15 months of age. And compassion for my older son, who was sleepily calling out to us, asking us to please "shhh", and for my husband, who had to get up early for a very hard day at work, and felt helpless in the face of our little one's distress. This compassion was like a soft blanket that held us all together in our discomfort, and helped us relax a bit, and finally, blessedly, go to sleep. Until the cat jumped on the bed and woke us up.

And that's how it goes. You stumble. You get back up. You walk. For years I used as my email signature the following quote by Rabbi Hillel:

"I get up, I walk, I fall down-
Meanwhile, I keep dancing"

That is Snow Lion. The willingness to keep dancing, to keep walking along the path, even when it is really, really hard to do so. To keep turning to gentleness, compassion, patience, and letting go when all you want to do is scream, tear your hair out and run away. This is bravery. This is enlightened warriorship. Wish me luck.

riding the rollercoaster

"As warriors, we try to rejoice whenever there is an obstacle, and we try to regard that as something that makes us smile. Each particular setback creates a further smile. We keep on going in that way, and we never give up or give in to any obstacles...It is like riding a rollercoaster: the more you go down and the more you go up, the more you smile each time." - Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche

I have been riding the rollercoaster that is parenting the past couple of weeks. I have been so tired out by six weeks of almost continuous illness that my neurosis has been, shall we say, a bit heightened. The usual ups and downs have been more exaggerated as my defenses have fallen away, or maybe, it's that the defenses have gotten stronger. Working with my mind while my two year old and one year old go about their business of exploring the vividness of phenomena and their emotions has been challenging work.

My previously very gentle eldest has turned into the toddler that hits, pushes and kicks other children, usually without any obvious provocation. If I look deeper of course, I see that there is provocation- as in, the other child is in his immediate space, or looking at a toy he is interested in, or beginning to interact with him in some completely innocuous way. Babies and older children alike are targets. It has been quite the ride for me, indeed. On the other hand, he has also taken off in his speech, which for me is a real joy. He was a very late talker, so much so that we were beginning to get concerned and had him evaluated. Hearing him express himself in words, and describing his world is incredibly poignant and wonderful.

Meanwhile, his brother is in that 13 month old "newly walking, must climb onto everything, creep into everything, run and fall everywhere" mode, marked by ouches and bruises. So, I have been alternating between loving appreciation of their growth and fear, chagrin, and horror at the acting out and getting hurt - all perfectly normal developmentally, and all perfectly challenging for this mama.

Using my mindfulness to create some space around my reactions to them has given me some insight. One thing that keeps coming up for me is my own fear of looking bad, or being bad. When my eldest pushes another toddler down, or deliberately bounces a ball off the head of a young baby - along with the almost primal reaction of needing to intervene and protect, comes a deep feeling of shame and embarrassment. These are very old feelings for me, and are present often in many of my interactions with others. Now, there is nothing wrong with me having these emotions. What becomes problematic is that if I am not mindful, these strong, old emotions lead me to behave unskillfully or aggressively with my toddler.

The same is true with my youngest when he is exploring and/or getting hurt. Feelings of shame, embarrassment, of somehow being wrong or bad arise, whether or not others are around to witness. Again, not wrong, but problematic if I am not mindful in how I respond. In both situations, if there is enough space, if I can pause for a brief second and touch in to what I am adding to what has occurred, what I am projecting onto it, I can usually respond appropriately- redirecting, comforting, distracting, having a gentle teaching moment, etc. When I can't pause, and am just carried by the energy of these hot emotions, I tend to overreact - I get a little aggressive in how I respond to my little ones. I become unskillful. I get more punitive or more exasperated or freaked out. I get shrill. I get nervous. Edgy. Things escalate. The space narrows. Everyone is miserable.

So, I am working on smiling, as Chogyam Trungpa taught. Learning to ride the rollercoaster with my arms up, constantly touching into the fear, shame, anger, frustration, tiredness, whatever, and letting go and opening up - smiling. Pulling myself and them out of the situation, sometimes physically, sometimes just to the other side of the room. Smiling.

It's been hard. Today was a challenging day. Painful. Trungpa continues:

"the experience of our day-to-day living situation consists of dissatisfaction, questioning, pain, depression, aggression, passion. All these are real, and we have to relate to them. Having a relationship with this may be extremely difficult. It's an organic operation without any anesthetics."

Today was like that. Raw. But I have found rawness to be more workable than just stuckness. Rawness has so much possibility and tenderness. Stuckness is so solid seeming and choking. So, I have had to keep touching that rawness, and just holding it.

"The present is worth looking at...Faith is that it's okay in the present situation, and we have some sense of trust in that."

if you can practice when distracted, you are well trained

This is another very powerful lojong slogan. It has been coming to mind often lately, as I have been, well, distracted. There have been a multitude of stresses and phenomena that have been pulling at my mind - trying to take it away from the present moment, often successfully.

I have said this many times before here, but it is all in the noticing. As soon as we notice we are distracted, as soon as we notice our mind has been pulled into the past or strayed into the future, we are back. We can only notice in the present moment. We notice, and we are right here, right now, once again. And then we notice if we are judging ourselves for having been lost in the fantasy of past or future. And we are back once again, and gentle once more.

We went to my parents' house for my youngest son's first birthday. We really went up to see my mother, who is slowly dying from multi-symptomatic Parkinson's disease. She has gotten much worse, and we hadn't been in awhile, so it was necessary to go as soon as we could, which coincided with my little love's turning one.

It was a long, hard car ride. My littlest screamed for the last two hours. We were exhausted when we arrived, but felt rejuvenated when we noticed (in the berry bush by my parents' back door), seven (yes, seven!) red cardinals. Their feathers were so vivid against the bare branches covered in snow. It brought us immediately into the now, and perked up our drooping spirits.

I have written before about the chaos in my mother's house due to her illness and the karma of the situation, and it is only getting worse as she gets sicker. So, it was hard. Then, our first night there, I became very ill with a stomach bug. The next day was my son's birthday, but we were unable to celebrate it as I spent the entire day in bed. My husband was left to care for our two little ones, my mother and my father. I was better the next day, but then he was struck with the bug. Then my father became ill, both our boys, and my mother, who ended up having to go to the ER to be rehydrated by IV. It was just a crazy, crazy visit. I had to really generate a lot of energy in order to care for everyone while still sick myself and arrange for more professional care for my mother - new aides to come at night (as we were too sick to feed her and get her to bed), calling doctors, getting the ok to bring her to the ER, arranging for aftercare. Calling social workers, health care agencies and siblings. Dealing with the family neurosis, heightened in these stressful circumstances. Working with my own guilt for getting everyone sick, especially my mother. Feeling disappointed and sad that my little one's first birthday was getting lost and forgotten in all of this life stuff happening. And feeling angry that my mom is dying. Talk about distraction.

Phenomena kept arising, and I kept being presented with the choice to really abide with it and let go of my desires or fight it, push it away, deflect it or try like hell to change it. Every time I chose the latter, the suffering level in the house increased tenfold. When I was able to let go and just be with the constantly changing reality, things were workable. They weren't easy, but they were workable and I could create some sanity. There was some breathing room.

When I resisted things as they are, I felt absolutely crazy and miserable. And what helped me keep coming back to the present moment and working with the circumstances with some level of equanimity and clarity were those beautiful cardinals. My parents' house is surrounded by bushes and bird feeders, which my father fills daily. The house has many windows as well. And there were so many moments each day when I was truly on the verge of losing my mind entirely when I would look out a window and there would be a flaming red cardinal looking back at me from his branch. Each time, it called me back to the now.

The great teacher Thich Nhat Hanh has a beautiful practice at his retreat centers. There is a large meditation gong, really huge, that can be heard, when rung, throughout the grounds and buildings. Throughout the day, every day, this gong is rung once, at various random times. Everyone who hears this gong stops for a moment, no matter what they are doing, and just reconnects to their breath and body. To the present moment. And then they proceed on. We don't need a giant gong to do this in our own lives. We can use whatever we have in our immediate environments to bring us back, no matter what is going on. Perhaps we live on a busy street and car horns often sound. What a wonderful mindfulness bell! Or perhaps crows haunt the parking lot of your workplace - when you notice one of their raucous cries - come back. Your baby crying. Your neighbor's telephone ringing. Your teen's Wii game. The glow of a neon sign. The flicker of a room light. Let these ordinary things bring you back. They are beautiful reminders, always available to us.

Having a well trained mind doesn't mean we don't get crazy or carried away. But it does mean we come back.

When reading about this slogan, I found a teaching by Judy Lief, who presented the following daily practice:

In your practice and during your daily activities, pay particular attention to the points at which you lose your mindfulness. In terms of bodhichitta practice, pay particular attention to the points at which you lose your openness or kindness. Notice the process of losing it and coming back.

This seemed useful for my daily life with children. This is why working with the raw, vivid, messy material of our daily life is so powerful. This is the richest mud for the lotus blossom of awakened heart to blossom in. Wishing you gentleness and good luck with your practice today and always.

in breath, out breath

"As you start the practice, you have a sense of your body and a sense of where you are, and then you begin to notice the breathing. The whole feeling of the breath is very important. The breath should not be forced, obviously; you are breathing naturally. The breath is going in and out, in and out. With each breath you become relaxed." - Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche

In meditation practice, we place our attention again and again on the breath as it goes in and out of our bodies. We go out with our breath, and then come back in, back to our bodies just sitting there on the good earth. Sometimes we may find ourselves going out, out, out with the breath and then staying way out there, feeling spacey and disconnected. Other times we may find ourselves in, in , in - closed, narrow, claustrophobic, forgetting to let go. We have to watch our own minds, and notice when we are too tight or too loose and then adjust accordingly.

I have been contemplating this lately in terms of our daily, weekly and monthly rhythms as a family, with the in breath and out breath as my guides for balance. When we spend to much time extending out - too many activities outside our home, too much stimulation, too many people - we get cranky, irritable, ungrounded and diffused. When we spend to much time focusing our energies inward on our home hearth, staying indoors, not engaging enough with others, being too stationary - we get stuck, myopic, stir-crazy. I have found that I need to hold our energies in my awareness each day, making sure we breathe together in and out.

In my family, we need time each day when we focus on staying grounded in our home - joining together for a song before breakfast, saying good morning to the Buddha and our teachers and sitting quietly for a bit, then doing necessary chores. We also need to exhale out - spending a good amount of time outdoors in the fresh air, getting together with other families when possible, or going to a library story time or other low key activity. I make sure we don't have something planned each day though with others - otherwise we get too overwhelmed and my little ones get too overstimulated. So certain days the focus is on just being with each other, both outside in nature and inside our home, and other days the focus is on a single excursion - a trip to the museum, a play date. Regardless of the day, we make sure to take the in-breath again come evening time - another shared song around the table, a lit candle while we prepare for bed, with my eldest blowing it out after evening chants.

Rather than working with something as scary as a "schedule", which my inherently rebellious nature resists, and which I sometimes suspect are used to make parents feel guilty about the inchoate nature of life with small children, I find that keeping this in-breath, out-breath rhythm feels natural, just as in meditation. After all, we aren't forcing the breath to go in and then out - it just does. The same with our daily and weekly rhythms - we aren't imposing something unnatural on our children, but instead are placing our mindfulness on the natural arising and ebbing of energy, and then going in and out with it.

I think we all feel when we have been indoors too long, or out in the world too much. We feel it physically and psychically, and our children are much more sensitive barometers of when we are out of synch with the breath of the day. We can get even subtler with this, in terms of what we do inside and outside the home - what is too diffuse, and what is too claustrophobic. Ideally our activities have their own internal in and out as well that is nourishing rather than draining. Each child and family is different in this, in terms of what they need to stay connected to the energy of basic goodness, or windhorse. What I have noticed about my own family is that when we are too inwards, we get depressed and stagnant and when we are too much outwards, we get cranky and often physically sick. When I am successful at balancing the in breath and the out breath of our days, things flow for us, we have fun, and we are both grounded and aware of others.

Here is a wonderful teaching by Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche on meditation.

sometimes you just get angry

"Whenever we’re challenged, there is opportunity to open to the difficulty and let the difficulty make us more compassionate, more wise. Or the opposite, which is that when things are difficult, the chances instead of it making us more afraid and therefore more vulnerable or more subject to being able to catch the anxiety in the atmosphere and spin off...and the tendency for aggression to escalate and violence to escalate under challenge is much greater."
- Pema Chodron

I get angry sometimes. I get angry because I get hooked by someone or something. I get hooked because I am human. The problem isn't necessarily in the getting hooked, although I am working on that as well (ha!). It is what I do once the hook is in - do I bite on and keep going, or do I relax, feel it, and then let it go?

I always thought of myself as the mama who never yelled. Or at least, that was my aspiration. My mother screamed constantly throughout my childhood. And it was awful. I vowed at a very early age to never do this with my own children. Ahem. But last week, I yelled not once, not twice, but a few times at my two year old. Now, my first instinct is to want to explain. Explain that we are all operating on very little sleep, with my toddler and often my 10 month old unwilling to nap and not going down to sleep at night very easily. And constantly waking up. Anyway, we are all very tired, and at times, extremely cranky with one another. My husband has been working late each day and on weekends, trying to finish some mandated reports he must do in his job as a social worker. So, it has been on my shoulders to care for the little ones all day and often all night, with no help until perhaps the rare Sunday. I am good and truly tired.

My toddler can be quite aggressive with his younger brother. This is what has been eliciting yells and, at times, shrieks from me - his constant harming of his little brother. When I am more rested, I can respond with gentleness and firmness, get resourceful, distract him, and so on. But when I am tired, and it is the hundredth time that day that he has made his little baby brother cry, and given him yet another welt, well, I have been losing it. And once I have lost it, I find I then become triggered by lesser things as well, like normal two year old mess making and mayhem. Because when I am tired, I begin to get caught by the content of my thoughts, by the stories I find I am whispering to myself, and have a harder time just dropping them. I have a harder time pausing when I see I am getting hooked, and just feeling the anger. So, I find myself yelling, and then instantly regretting it.

What I have had to do, in addition to the usual regret, remediate and refrain tool, is try and really, really accept my anger. I wrote before about bowing to our pain, to our lineage of dysfunction - but we also have to bow to our own anger. Anger is, ultimately, just energy. If we can work with it as such, it begins to lose its power over us. Anger becomes a problem when instead of simply feeling its energy and letting it flow through and dissolve, we either suppress it or act it out - therefore harming others. In both cases, we are solidifying the energy, rather than just letting it arise and cease. The first step to working with it as energy is to acknowledge it. To not suppress it and to not reject it. But to just admit that it is there, working in us. Again, it helps to use our awareness to notice we are angry, and to feel where that anger lives, physically.

Once we have noticed it and acknowledged it, we can bow to it. Bowing to me in this sense means accepting it, "I see you anger. I am angry." Keeping it to "I am angry" is potent. I think it is more helpful to keep it to that, and not spin out into "he made me angry" or "this makes me angry", which solidifies it. Then, bow. What does that mean? You could really, truly bow. Or you could close your eyes, and just breathe. Respect your anger. For me, when I bow to my anger, I often find something else underneath it, hiding under the anger. In addition to my physical tiredness this past week, I was sad about the death of a close friend. And I had been worrying about several other matters. I find so often with my children that although their action is the trigger, there are so many causes and conditions leading up to that incident that have so very little to do with what just happened in the moment. When we are caught by our anger, our world gets so tight and narrowed, and we lose all sense of vastness. Just feeling our anger, accepting it, can create the gap where we can touch back into the spaciousness of basic goodness.

Sometimes bowing to our anger is not enough. Sometimes we need to leave the room. Sometimes we need to take our little ones outside. Sometimes we need to call a friend on the phone and cry. Sometimes we need to have ice cream for dinner and go to bed with our baby at 5:00 in the afternoon. But that is, as Thich Nhat Hanh says, "taking care of our anger". Sometimes we need to do that. It is a practice of compassion, taking care of our anger.

What changed the pattern last week for me was bowing to it, and taking care of it. And taking better care of me - going to bed earlier, eating better, making sure we got out of the house every day. Talking to another mother who had been in the trenches a few years earlier also helped. And accepting that I get angry sometimes. And sometimes, even though I really don't want to, I am going to yell. And then I will move forward from there. I will keep working on coming back to the present moment, working skillfully as I can with the energy of anger. Touching into my basic goodness and the basic goodness of my children. As Suzuki Roshi said,
"Everything is perfect, but there is a lot of room for improvement."

just nowness

"The way to experience nowness is to realize that this very moment, this very point in your life, is always the occasion...That is one reason that your family situation, your domestic everyday life, is so important. You should regard your home as sacred, as a golden opportunity to experience nowness."
- Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche

With a new year upon us, it can be easy to find oneself dwelling on the past and on the future, getting lost in the fantasy of what was and what could be. We seem to do this on a daily basis, new year or no, and in this constant flitting from dream to dream, from memory of what was to hopes and fears around what might be, we completely lose the present moment. And in losing the present moment, we lose the magic and power of what is right here, right now.

Because that is all there is - just nowness. Everything else isn't real. The past is a fleeting memory, the future ungraspable and unknowable. It is only just this, just now. It seems we are always forgetting this simple, liberating truth. Caught up in the daily tasks and trials of parenting, it can be easy to lose sight of the present moment, because the present moment seems so completely ordinary, so completely whatever, so completely, at times, hard. Especially when we are experiencing challenges.

My children don't sleep. They don't go to sleep easily and they certainly don't stay asleep. The nighttime is an endless chain of waking and soothing and changing beds. Mama and daddy don't get much rest. This has been very challenging for us. Added to this challenge for me is that my two year old is still nursing, and still nursing as much as his ten month old brother. These obstacles - the lack of sleep, and the frequent toddler nursing - have threatened at times to undo me in the sense of me losing my equanimity and patience with my children. So I have been contemplating how I can transform this sense of challenge.

What I have realized is it gets challenging for me when I cease to live in the present moment, but instead dwell on what has been and what I fear will be. When I begin to think of how little sleep I have been getting, or that I was just up an hour ago, and that it is 2:00 a.m., and that I just wish they would sleep, well, this is when I begin to become undone. But if I can ignore the clock (even turn it to the wall), bring my mind back from counting how many times I have been woken up already, bring my mind back from the hope that they just stay asleep, back to the present moment, well, then I can deal with things. I can nurse the baby right now, bring my toddler back into bed with me right now, stroke both their heads until they fall asleep, right now. Then I fall asleep as well. I end up feeling much better about things and more rested in the morning when I can do this.

The same with the toddler nursing. When I can stop counting how many times he has nursed that day, and drop my fear that he will want to nurse a few more times before the day is through, I am better able to just be with him in the present moment, as he is, and then set compassionate boundaries with him - agreeing to just a short nurse, or finding something that he will accept in its place. I become more resourceful because my world stops being so small, so narrowed by the past and future crushing it in. More possibilities arise in just nowness. When I instead react with the weight of the past - and its attendant resentment and suffering - nobody is satisfied.

One of my most profound experiences while meditating occurred on a retreat I did in Seattle. I had been a very serious practitioner at that point for the prior couple of years, and had done several long, silent retreats, including a 30 day retreat. So I guess things had been percolating for awhile. But on that rainy day, after about a day of silent meditation, I was penetrated by the realization that this is it. This. Just this moment. This is my life. Right here, right now. Nothing else. Just this moment, and then this moment, and then this moment. Nothing fancy. Completely ordinary, simple, unastonishing. Different than how it was. Different than how it will be, possibly. But overflowing with richness, with aliveness. I almost shouted out with relief. Yes, I think it was relief I felt! For a few moments, the past fell away, and I was able to let go of the dream of the future, and just rest with what is.

Now, I obviously don't rest in this awareness all the time. Or even most of the time. But the more I bring myself back to nowness, the more familiar I become with it, the more I trust it, the more I am able to stay with it. This is why I trust the path of parenting. Because this is it. This is my life, right now. Moment by moment by moment. And this is freedom. Chogyam Trungpa continues in his teaching:

"Appreciating sacredness begins very simply by taking an interest in all the details of your life. Interest is simply applying awareness to what goes on in your everyday life—awareness while you're cooking, awareness while you're driving, awareness while you're changing diapers, even awareness while you're arguing. Such awareness can help to free you from speed, chaos, neurosis, and resentment of all kinds. It can free you from the obstacles to nowness, so that you can cheer up on the spot, all the time."

mindful resolutions

Blogging is lighter than usual due to the winter festivities. As the new year of 2011 is almost upon us, I found this article today worth reading. Many of us torment ourselves in true samsaric fashion this time of year with making resolutions to do things better in some way. I guess I just want to chime in with the gentle reminder that things as they are, including you, are already basically good. I think to hold in your mindstream certain aspirations can be helpful, but only when embraced with gentleness and confidence in your own buddha nature. Even when we haven't showered in a week, haven't cleaned up the detritus from the holiday presents, are eating sugar cookies for breakfast and our children are still naked at noon, we are still basically OK, and so are they. Mindfulness is a process, a series of many steps, backwards and forwards and this way and that. It isn't anything we can wrap up in a shiny bow and point out to others. It is a slow, gentle wearing away of habitual patterns and learning how to open again and again and then again.

In other words, no quick fix. And it is perfectly perfect in that way. So when writing a list of resolutions, be easy on yourselves. Aspiring for more mindfulness, more compassion, more gentleness - very useful. And you are already perfect buddha mama and perfect buddha daddy. And it goes without saying of course, that your little or big ones are perfect buddhas as well.

the gift of presence

Just a nice link to a little article on giving our children what they most desire - ourselves, present and authentic. Authentic because we are really just right here, right now with them. I would only add that by practicing mindfulness with our families, we are more able to be fully available to them. The more we can notice when we are not truly present with our children, and then bring ourselves back, the more this gift will be part of our daily lives with our families.

Children's Day or preparing for the solstice

"Children's Day provides a special opportunity to express appreciation for and with our children."

Rather than celebrate Christmas or Chanukah in our household, we celebrate the joy and goodness to be found, even in the darkest times, with the Shambhala holiday of Children's Day. This link provides information if you are interested in finding out more about it. It is a holiday that connects us to the winter solstice while celebrating the joy and magic of our children.

We decorate our meditation center's shrine and our home shrines with pine boughs, twinkling lights, candy and toys, all offered to the King and Queen dolls, representing the masculine and feminine principles of skillful means and compassion, energy and space, father and mother. These dolls sit in the place of honor on the shrine. Some people purchase beautiful Japanese King and Queen dolls, while others make their own out of gingerbread, or paper, or felt, or perhaps pine cones - whatever is at hand and that is inspiring.

I love filling our home during this darkest time of year with light, warmth and the gifts of food, connection and kindness. My toddler can't ignore the omnipresent Santa Claus and the festive decorations in our USian city, and I, personally, really enjoy the example of generosity, community and celebration that is at the heart of these winter holidays. So, we are teaching our boys that Santa is a bodhisattva of generosity, that this is the time of year when we celebrate light amidst the darkness, and enjoying the pleasure they take in the various decorations, carols and lights. There is much magic to be found in these outer forms, and I don't want to deny them the joy found within.

I do however, wish to cultivate in them a mindfulness of consumption - to not mistake materialism for happiness. They are very young, so the concept of asking for gifts has not entered their mindstreams yet. They have very generous grandparents, who we have gently asked to give only simple gifts of natural toys, or to contribute to music lessons in lieu of a physical item. This works for now, although it is hard to contain their generosity. I am sure once the children are in school, influenced by peers and popular culture, we will have new challenges. I am hopeful that by nurturing a sense of contentment and appreciation for the richness inherent in every thing, they will be better able to discern between fleeting wants and actual needs when they are older, as well as able to use this time of year to connect to generosity. This Children's Day we will be collecting food items to donate to a food pantry, and when they are old enough, we would like to spend time around the solstice volunteering together as a family to help those less fortunate than we. We have also made it a tradition to put out food for the little creatures that inhabit our neighborhood - birds, squirrels, rabbits and so on, reminding ourselves that all beings want to be happy and free of discomfort.

However you choose to celebrate this season, there are so many ways to practice opening to others, by giving without the expectation of reciprocation or even appreciation, by practicing generosity with the pure aspiration of simply making other beings happy. We can use the season to cultivate friendliness towards ourselves and others, connecting to our gentleness and soft hearts rather than getting lost in the busyness of what we think we must do. We can be aware of own needs, keep things a bit simpler, and continue to let go of expectations and rest when we need to amidst all the "things to do". I have been trying to find time every day as we approach the solstice to just pause and connect to the present moment. When I can't meditate formally, I do this in the form of a short walk outside, or just sitting while my children play or nurse and taking some deep breaths, raising my gaze up and noticing, then gently letting go of whatever is arising in my mind. This helps create some space during a time when our lives can become quite claustrophobic with all the running around.

How do you work with mindfulness during this season? How will you be celebrating the solstice? Wishing you all peace during these shortening days, and that basic goodness, which "shines like the sun" as our teachers remind us, illuminates the dark.

be grateful to everyone

"If we were to come up with one word about each of the troublemakers in our lives, we would find ourselves with a list of descriptions of our own rejected qualities, which we project onto the outside world. In traditional teachings on lojong it is put another way: other people trigger the karma that we haven't worked out. They mirror us and give us the chance to befriend all of that ancient stuff that we carry around like a backpack full of granite boulders." -Pema Chodron
Start Where You Are: A Guide to Compassionate Living (Shambhala Library)

We are celebrating Thanksgiving this week in the United States, and so I have been contemplating this particular lojong slogan. It is a tough one. It is so tough that I often feel that if I was truly successful in following its teaching, I might actually wake up. Can I really be grateful to everyone? Not only that, but can I really be grateful to every circumstance that arises, no matter how challenging?

It is easy to appreciate the good things in our lives, the people and circumstances that make us happier. But to appreciate the other stuff - the people and situations that only cause us trouble and agita - well, that seems to take some practice. "Be grateful to everyone" is a radical way to live. It requires you to open up and let go when you would really prefer to close down, lash out, be right, hold onto a preference or opinion, and maybe just crawl into bed and stay there all day. It requires me to thank those circumstances and those sentient beings that I find difficult, distasteful or distressing. Because without them, I would have no opportunity to see where I still get stuck, caught up in this illusion/delusion of "me" and "mine". I would ultimately have no path to walk, nothing to transform. The difficult people and circumstances are the friendly reminders to me to wake up. They are the constant feedback telling me which way to go on the path, what I still need to make friends with. They show me where I still create suffering for myself and others.

In his teaching on this slogan, Chogyam Trungpa says some truly radical, ego shattering things. He also says a very small thing that always sticks with me: "if there is no noise outside during our sitting meditation, we cannot develop mindfulness". Our usual modus operandi is to try and protect ourselves from the noise, to shut it out. We want to try and wrap the world in bubble wrap rather than relate to the phenomena that arise constantly to disturb our peace of mind. But if we are really committed to manifesting our basic goodness and to getting unstuck, we need that noise, and we need those people - you know - those people that make us want to run away and wrap ourselves in bubble wrap. As I gather with family this week during the holiday, I will be holding this slogan sharply in focus. Our families are often so hard to be grateful to, especially when all gathered together with the expectation of having a celebratory day. So many buttons can be pushed during this time together. It is a good time to practice our mindfulness, especially with our children watching. A good time to practice gratitude for the troublemakers we know in our own inner circle - who hook us into our habitual pattern, into our old karma.

This is ultimately a friendly practice. It doesn't mean that we allow people to abuse us or walk all over us. If we need to set a boundary, then we do so. We can do that out of compassion for ourselves and our troublemakers, and not out of aggression. We do it out of gratitude. They are teaching us how to take care of ourselves, and by extension, others. This slogan can be contemplated on a daily basis, and I have found it invaluable in my own life with small children. There are times when I don't feel particularly grateful to my children even, and it is in those times that I bring this slogan to mind. It helps. I see where I am stuck. I see where I am not very friendly to myself and others. Slowly, I let go. Gentleness grows. Appreciation dawns.

So this Thanksgiving, try this slogan out for size when you feel like grabbing the turkey leg and running out the door. Or when the children are screaming in the car, when the person behind you in traffic cuts you off, when your mother-in-law makes her passive aggressive comment about your parenting, or whatever. Happy Thanksgiving, and as always, be gentle.

what to accept and what to reject

"Nobody else can really begin to sort out for you what to accept and what to reject in terms of what wakes you up and what makes you fall asleep. No one else can really sort out for you what to accept - what opens up your world - and what to reject - what seems to keep you going round and round in some kind of repetitive misery." - Pema Chodron

We got our computer room painted. Or I should say, the back bedroom where our computer resides had paint dropping off the ceiling, so after many entreaties, our landlord finally came in one cold Saturday and painted it an institutional green color, then closed the windows tight and left. So we have been airing out the room for the past week, exhausting out the chemical gasses with fans and open windows in chilly fall temperatures. Which means that I have been unable to blog and unable to go online at all, which, in a way, has been great.

While blogging is something that I would like to cultivate as it helps keep me on the path of mindfulness and compassion, being online in general is something I really really need to cut down on, or reject, to use dharma terms. We don't have a television, so I use the computer as my source of mindless (as in makes me lose all mindfulness/awareness) entertainment. This kind of indulgence or cultivation of mindlessness in turn makes me feel sluggish, resentful, unmotivated and just squashes my lungta, or chi. Even worse, when I am online, my children want to go online also. My infant wants to know what is magnetizing me in the middle of a playtime and my toddler really wants to watch a Thomas the Train video on the web. And how can I say no to them when I am there, glued to the screen, scrolling through my email? I may only spend five minutes doing that, but that is enough for my children to become distracted. So the mindlessness spreads, as do its attendant symptoms.

As a practitioner of mindfulness, I have often been admonished by my teachers to be aware of what I am cultivating in my heartmind. Am I watering the seeds of compassion and wisdom or am I watering those of ignorance and aggression? This awareness of what we are cultivating internally can extend out into our external lives as well. What are we putting our attention on, what are choosing to bring into our day to day lives with our children? Is what we are bringing in encouraging sanity, clarity, compassion, and joy in their lives? Or is it watering the seeds of distraction, dissatisfaction, anxiety? Are we encouraging their nourishment or their ill health? What I have found is that if something in our daily lives is nourishing us, it gives us energy, connection and contentment. And if it is not nourishing us, it leaves us cranky, drained and checked out.

When I was pregnant with my children I was very conscious of what I was eating, as whatever I ingested would enter into their growing brains and bodies as they waited within me, readying for their births. Now that they are in this realm, I sometimes am not so conscious of what I am feeding them in terms of daily nurturing. With small children, a habit can be acquired extremely quickly, as they cling to routine and sameness. Hence, my toddler now expects a cookie from the corner Italian deli every Tuesday after library storytime- all due to the fact I had to buy lunch there two weeks in a row and the deli man kindly offered him a cookie when he saw my son was impatient. And if he sees me on the computer, he expects to be able to watch a video.

These aren't big, terrible habits. But within them I see the seeds of habitual tendencies that can lead to closing up rather than opening. And I see as one of my main jobs as a mama to be the tender encouragement of opening to the world and other beings. So this week I am beginning to focus on what I can accept into our world that will assist us in this opening, and what I need to reject. What leaves us energized and what leaves us checked out? I made this list of things to accept and cultivate. I think it really helps to look at these kinds of lists as things that nourish us and help us in our sanity, rather than things we should be doing:


1) daily meditation and contemplation: for me with two under 2, this means having my toddler ring my meditation gong in the morning, doing a short morning chant and letting him and my infant play in my lap while I sit quietly for a few minutes. If they are not having it, then just the gong and the chant is enough.

2) keeping the radio, music and videos off until after naps in the afternoon, when we can use them for a transition time of about 30 minutes. This is a hard one for us, as my toddler is really habituated now to waking up and watching a video as I check my email. This means mama is no longer online until the children are asleep at night.

3) saving treats like cookies, cake etc. for special occasions or at the most once per week. This is also hard as I am a former professional baker and chocolatier. Which means I still bake, a lot. Ahem.

4) continuing to cultivate mindful speech around my children and with others. This also means speaking with gentleness. This too has been hard lately, as my toddler has been entering the defiant stage known as the terrible twos.

5) going to bed at a decent hour. This means mama as well. Being offline this week really helped me with that as my old tendency was to stay up to all hours surfing the net while my children dozed.

It is interesting to note the pull towards those habits which do not nourish, but keep us distracted and closed down. I have noticed it all week - the pull to the computer in the poisoned paint room! Look at what it took to keep me out - noxious fumes! What are your lists? What do you want to cultivate in your daily life with your children, and what to you want to reject? As with all things on the path, just remember to relax with it all, to be gentle with yourselves, and keep walking along.

Mindful Movies: How to Cook Your Life

We saw a wonderful movie the other night about Zen teacher and Master Chef Edward Espe Brown. How To Cook Your Life was directed by Doris Dorrie, a filmmaker who is also a practicing Buddhist and has made other dharma films of fiction. This documentary shows Chef Brown cooking, teaching and being authentically, unabashedly himself. Author of The Tassajara Bread Book and a student of Suzuki Roshi, Espe Brown is a wonderful and direct teacher of cultivating genuineness, both in the kitchen and in the heart. The movie is very funny and moving. He is not afraid to show himself honestly, warts and all. He admits to anger. He shows sorrow. He laughs at himself. And yet through it all, he conveys such gentle compassion and insight, that you are left with a deeper understanding of the teachings.

Cooking is his vehicle for understanding and transmitting the dharma, and his food is so beautiful and nourishing to look at, and having used his cookbooks, I can attest that it also tastes wonderful. He speaks beautifully in the film about things as they are, and how to surrender to the present moment. The film left us hungry and a little bit happy sad, as we thought of how to apply his teachings to our own daily life with our children. He says one thing in the film that stuck with me: "it is our job to help the swiss chard [or lettuce or whatever we are cooking] be the best swiss chard it can be, not manipulate it or force it to be anything else. It is our job to just offer ourselves to it and ask, how can I assist you in being yourself fully?" I have been contemplating this all week as it applies to child rearing. It is a useful and powerful teaching for me.

Here is a nice poem by Mr. Espe Brown:

The truth is you're already a cook.
Nobody teaches you anything,
but you can be touched, you can be awakened.
Put down the book and start asking,
"What have we here?"

Though recipes abound, for soups and salads,
breads and entrées, for getting enlightened
and perfecting the moment, still
the unique flavor of Reality
appears in each breath, each bite,
each step, unbounded and undirected.

Each thing just as it is,
What do you make of it?

You can view the trailer for the movie here - although it doesn't do it justice!

sick and mindful

Well, we are all sick here in the gesbaby household. A summer bout of influenza has sneaked up on us and laid us low, and the timing is, to be honest, just terrible. We were all supposed to be in New York City this weekend, celebrating the upcoming birth of my brother's baby girl, and hanging out with some very dear, old friends who we rarely see. So, in addition to being ill, we have had to be mindful of indulging in our disappointment.

This can be tough for me. Disappointment is just so juicy, isn't it? And when I am physically sick, I sometimes feel justified in letting go of mindfulness practice, because, well, it can be hard work and I just don't feel like it- I'm sick after all. I want to focus on the negative - how my house is even messier, wholesome food scarcer (my husband doesn't cook), the babes are needier and I can't get the rest I need. Add to that a cancelled vacation with loved ones and things are simply bleak. We spend our lives trying to get everything to conform to our wants and needs and illness upends that applecart entirely!

Which is why maintaining mindfulness, even during illness, is one of the most nurturing things we can do for ourselves and our families. I find it helpful during these times to keep letting go whenever I notice myself engaging in thoughts dwelling on the illness or my frustration/disappointment that I am sick. I try to come back to the present moment and allow myself to rest there, even though it might not be entirely comfortable to do so, what with aches and fever and what have you! But I have found that adding anything to the physical discomfort of illness just makes me feel so much worse, and also makes me very cranky with my children and partner. Illness slows us down, so we can relax into that and not fight it. When illness makes us itchy to be outside of the house, or tackle a project that has been planned, we can notice that itch of wanting things to be different, notice the tightness it creates in us, and just breathe. We can send breath to where the tightness lives and practice releasing it physically. We can give ourselves a glass of orange juice or a nice bowl of warm soup, watch a movie on the couch snuggled with our children, take them all into bed with us for a communal nap. Sometimes just breathing is enough. We so rarely give ourselves the space to do that in our busy days.

When feeling really awful, I also try to practice tonglen. By breathing out healing for myself and all beings who are suffering from illness, I am able to unwind my tendency to make it all about me and how miserable I am. This invariably leads to me feeling less miserable. I start by connecting to my basic goodness, that sense of complete spaciousness and freedom, then start slowly breathing in my suffering and discomfort and breathing out healing. Then I extend to other beings - I breathe in their suffering and discomfort with the flu, and breathe out healing to them. This can be very brief, just a touching in really.

So we are practicing just breathing here while the chaos around us builds up. My babes continue to teach me generosity, as even in my illness I have to extend out and care for them, and care for them with tenderness and patience as they are also sick. I continue to practice turning my heart and mind outward towards others, rather than inwards towards just myself. Sometimes I do this willingly, and sometimes not so much. But this is the heart of our practice, and illness gives us an amazing opportunity to deepen it.

Mindful birth

The power and intensity of labor pull us right into each moment. Each labor is unique. Like life, you never know how things will unfold. - Myla Kabat-Zinn

Giving birth is one of the most intense experiences that mind can go through- so intense in fact, that the buddhist teachings tell us birth can be an opportunity to experience the true nature of mind fully, just as at death. As with all experiences, we can open to birthing or we can close and attempt to stave off the physical and emotional challenges that it presents us with. By opening to each moment of labor and allowing ourselves to be pulled into the present as Myla Kabat-Zinn describes, rather than being dragged into it kicking and screaming, we will be able to relax and let go. The more we can relax and let go, the more we can experience our mind fully and welcome the arrival of our precious baby.

Relaxing and letting go can look many different ways. It can look peaceful, quiet, and calm as we ride the waves of surges. It can also look chaotic, intense, loud, or even scary. Whatever the birth, we can come back to the breath. We can place our mind on the in-breath, staying with the intensity of physical sensation, and relax and let go with the out breath as it dissolves into space. We can keep opening into space as we breathe out, letting go of any tension or tightening. We can allow ourselves to laugh or to cry. We can trust that each breath is bringing our precious baby closer to us. We can trust our bodies, their ability to grow and nourish this baby and bring him or her into the world. By opening and letting go, we can listen to our bodies during birth and let our body wisdom lead us where we need to go in the process. We can rest between surges, rebuild our windhorse, and get back to the work of bringing our baby out.

Birth can be a powerful opportunity to let go of our preconceived ideas of who we are and how we should behave. With my second birth, I literally growled and grunted like a bear during the final stages of labor- which was a full embrace of the present moment and what I needed to do to meet my baby. I let my body and mind guide me, rather than second guessing myself. I fully opened to the intensity that was arising and went with it, rather than fighting it and feeling any storyline of embarrassment or shame. We can try and watch our minds during labor and birth, noticing when we are resisting what is happening or adding hope and fear to the situation, and then choosing to let go of it all and open again. Whatever kind of birth we are having, we can do this. Whether you are having a vaginal birth or a c-section, natural birth or otherwise, you can continue to practice opening to what is unfolding, watch your mind, and relax into the experience moment by moment by using the breath as a guide.

Birth is unpredictable. We can't plan on how it is going to go. It is an adventure that asks us to open wider than we may have ever been asked to open before. By trusting in the present moment and in our basically good mind and body, we can bring our baby into being with confidence and power. Wishing you all a beautiful birth!

Transforming our family karma

One way of understanding "lineage" is "linkage" – that which links each of us to our true nature, to each other, to the teachings, to the succession of teachers and to primordial wisdom itself. – Richard Reoch

I recently read a paper by a psychologist named Lloyd deMause in which he talks about the neurotic and destructive tendency in abusive parents to use their children as “poison containers”, in other words, as vessels into which all of the unresolved psychic pain and neuroses of their childhoods are injected. The more I contemplate this, the stronger I feel that all parents are destined to do this to some extent or another, not just those who are abusive towards their children. We all have the tendency to respond to our children with the same neurosis that we learned from our families – and we will do so until we see this clearly, and are able to transform it. Not that our family neuroses are equivalent to abuse, but they certainly create suffering for others and ourselves. Why not stop the lineage of neuroses, and transform it into the lineage of wisdom and sanity?

Our parents are often the main, if not the only, parenting role models we have. They have the most success in continuing a lineage, or linkage as Richard Reoch defines it, of either neurosis or nurture that can be traced back for many generations. If we are not mindful in our parenting, we will find that those same habitual patterns will be inherited by our own children, and be carried on into future generations. How do we cultivate those karmic seeds in our own lineages that hold awakening and compassion rather than aggression and fear? I think this is one of our central tasks as parents. It all depends on what seeds we choose to water!

To have some choice over what family karma our children inherit from us, we must continue to create enough space in our own minds to be able to distinguish when we are acting out of the accumulated karma of our families of origin, and when we are actually making a choice and acting out of our basic goodness or wisdom. We often see this choice arise when we are under pressure, when our children manage to provoke us, or when we are not taking good enough care of ourselves and so get overtaken by exhaustion or resentment. In all of these scenarios, our automatic responses often get the better of us. And in my own experience, our automatic responses are often those inherited from our parents.

The more we are able to slow down our automatic responses, the more possibility we create for behaving in a different way. The more mindfulness we can cultivate through meditation, whether it is formal sitting practice or acting with intention throughout our day, the more space will occur for us, so that we will be able to see when we are about to react to something or someone else in a habitual way. At first, we won’t really notice until after the fact, in which case we can use the regret, remediate and refrain tool I blogged about before. But at least we notice. We can go through our entire lives without noticing when we have created suffering, although we won’t escape the residual pain it leaves in its wake. So just noticing when we have behaved automatically is a big, important first step.

The more mindfulness we create, the more we will be able to notice the habitual response while or even before it occurs. Once this begins to happen, we can begin to pause. We can just pause when we feel the energy arise in us that usually leads to harming ourselves or others. That pause begins to literally stop the momentum of karma, the flow of habitual poison cultivated for so many generations. Once that momentum is interrupted, we can touch in with our bodies. Where do we feel this energy of anger, of fear, of resentment, frustration, whatever? Is my chest tightening? Is my stomach cramping? Can I breathe? Touching into what is going on physically for us is a way to ground that energy, begin to work with it rather than being carried away by it. We can begin to notice what thoughts we are engaging in. Are these thoughts that reflect our basic goodness and that of our children? Or do these thoughts focus on what is “wrong” with ourselves, our children, the situation, etc? If it is the latter, we can choose to let go of those thoughts. We can choose not to believe them. We can stop writing the story that has been written for so many centuries in our families.

How then do we choose to react, to behave towards our children? The possibilities are endless. Maybe we can use a gentle but firm tone rather than shouting. Maybe we can leave the room until we feel calmer. Or we can choose to offer a consequence to our children for their behavior that we actually feel comfortable following through with, that is in proportion to what has occurred. We might even discover the most appropriate response is laughter, or a change of scene. We can begin to create enough space in our interactions for our children to see their own basic goodness, and be encouraged that, because it is who they truly are, they can act out of wisdom rather than out of their own fear or anger. This can create a dialogue of compassion between parent and child that will transform any poison into joy.

This is challenging work and it can feel uncomfortable at times. You are turning over ground that may not have been cultivated at all during many generations! I once went to a teaching by Pema Chodron where she said that when you feel that discomfort while doing this work, stopping that momentum of habitual pattern energy, it is the burning of karma. So, welcome the fire!

Basic goodness and our daily parenting challenges

Buddhist psychology is based on the notion that human beings are fundamentally good. Their most basic qualities are positive ones: openness, intelligence and warmth...When problems are seen in this [context], then there is less panic and everything seems more workable. When problems arise, instead of being seen as purely threats, they become learning situations, opportunities to find out more about one’s own mind, and to continue on one’s journey. - Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche

I've been contemplating daily life problems and the truth of basic goodness lately. I've been contemplating basic goodness, or buddha nature, for many years now, but have been doing so in a more urgent way since my first son was born. And as for the problems - well, with the birth of a child, it does seem that our daily lives become rather more complicated!

As Chogyam Trungpa explains above, in the buddhist view, our true nature is fundamentally, basically good. Our minds are inherently sane, compassionate, wise, joyful and clear. That is who we truly ARE. We are all awakened buddhas. But we do not experience ourselves as basically good in an ongoing way. Instead, we mistake our discursive thinking for who we are. All of our hopes and fears, our replaying of the past and fantasizing about the future, our neurosis - we think all of THAT is who we are. This case of mistaken identity seems to make our daily lives inherently problematic, rather than inherently joyful and sane. I think that because of this mistake, we find it very hard to be gentle towards ourselves. And when it is hard to be gentle towards ourselves, it becomes very hard to be gentle towards others in a consistent, lasting way. This includes our children.

Our children are also basically good, fundamentally awake beings. I think we have an easier time perceiving this in them - their ability to be awake to the present moment, to dwell in their own, pure natures, to not get caught up in past and future. They fall, they cry, they get up, and they are on to the next moment. Their basic goodness is less obscured by habitual thought patterns.

But ...because we distrust that we are also basically good, we can begin to doubt it in our children as well, particularly when they challenge us, which they do on a daily basis! When they irritate us with their demands or their behavior, we can very easily let the irritation take us over and respond to them without gentleness or sanity. We can then use that response as evidence pointing to our lack of basic goodness! It can become a vicious cycle of blaming our child and then blaming ourselves, escalating and escalating until we are all miserable. We get stuck in the challenge, rather than letting go and allowing space to expand.

Mistakes in our parenting will occur - it is part of being a human being in this world, learning to trust ourselves, learning to trust our children, learning to trust in basic goodness. Our aspiration as mindful parents is to use these mistakes as learning opportunities to open further into our true natures and to our children. A teaching that has worked powerfully for me is "regret, remediate and refrain" followed by my own addition of "and then move on".

Regret: we realize we have responded in a way not in accordance with our aspirations, or created a situation of confusion or aggression or whatever. Remediate: if it is possible, we change the situation, apologize for the response, clear up the confusion etc. Refrain: we restate to ourselves our intention to refrain from that particular kind of response, that particular confusing action, etc. and do our best to not repeat it. And then we move on. We don't continue to replay the incident, the response, over and over in our minds, beating ourselves up about it. We don't continue to fantasize about what we should or could have done, said, given instead. We let go and we move on into the next moment.

This kind of mindfulness work in our day-to-day parenting can be very powerful, and can truly transform our problems into opportunities for opening our hearts and transforming our neurosis. It can be challenging work. We can discover that we are rather attached to viewing ourselves as inherently bad rather than inherently good. Being inherently a buddha can seem rather threatening!! But when we begin to unravel the thick skein of thought patterns we have spent so long in weaving, we discover an incredible source of joy and energy that in turn allows for our children to express their own basic goodness in myriad ways. Our home life becomes one of sanity and nurture, a further part of our journey of awakening. What a gift to bestow on our children!
Here is a wonderful talk by Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche on having confidence in our basic goodness. I would love to hear your thoughts!

Baby Minding Practice

Here is a baby mindfulness article I wrote for my buddhist community's newsletter - about practicing mindfulness with a newborn.

http://shambhalatimes.org/2010/06/04/practicing-with-a-newborn/

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".