by James Crews

There’s a beautiful Zen koan that goes like this:

A monk asked Yun Men, “How is it when the tree withers and the leaves fall?”

Yun Men said, “Nothing but the body exposed in the Golden Wind.”

The other day I went for a run in the beech woods near where my parents live. Out of breath I sat down leaning on one of the very tall majestic beech trees and rested. The woods felt like a cathedral with the tall arched roof of the branches above me.

Every so often there would be a rustling here or there in the canopy above, and then a gentle leaf shower would fall, just from where the little flurry of wind had kissed the tree tops. Then after a pause the wind would blow up a fluster somewhere else, another little shower of pirouetting golden leaves… and then again somewhere else. I was enchanted. I watched the leaves falling – each one joining the leaf carpet with the lightest elegance.

I contemplated how all things descend like this eventually. I also tried to square this up with the uneasiness of aging, and the seeming cruelty of how this can be as we grow older – illness and less ability both mental and physical, having to let go of doing things you loved to do, having to face an emptier and slower life. My parents were on my mind.

Perhaps beneath it all is the bareness, the vulnerability, that both the koan and the poet James Crews speak of. Stripped back to the fragility and brittleness of our human bones – body exposed – can we surrender a little bit, can we let ourselves be taken by the Golden Wind? How might this feel in our practice when we sit with the breath? Might this help to prepare us for the aging process?

And is there nobility in the vulnerability perhaps? Or on the other hand, like Crew says, is there something just so touching about our holding on? Perhaps we can lovingly accept our holding on as a sign of our all too human heart – how we hold on to what we hold dear, beyond it’s time. How we hold on and hold on until there can be no more holding on and we just have to give in to the loss.

Is it even possible to accept the grimness of life? The life without the positive spin? For me today doesn’t feel like a day for sugar-coating the realities with lovely ideas. A line from Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet comes to mind:

“…And you would accept the seasons of your heart, even as you have always accepted the seasons that pass over your fields.”

Even the grim view can pass through, giving way to moments of blessing where we again feel touched by the Golden Wind.

PS. Being aware of the wonder of life and the small blessings, can help us live in the moment, even in challenging times. Check out The Wonder of the Everyday course and begin 2023 with a fresh perspective on your life…

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Much of your pain is self-chosen.
It is the bitter potion by which the physician within you heals your sick self.
Therefore trust the physician, and drink his remedy in silence and tranquility:
For his hand, though heavy and hard, is guided by the tender hand of the Unseen,
And the cup he brings, though it burn your lips, has been fashioned of the clay which the Potter has moistened with His own sacred tears.

by Kahlil Gibran
Excerpt from The Prophet, first published in 1923

We all have our own particular version of human pain. It changes many times over the course of a life, but some painful patterns and experiences circle back to us over and over with a familiar shape and feel. My own perennial ‘cross to bear’ is headache pain and it has accompanied me throughout most of my adult life. I find Kahlil Gibran, the Lebanese-American poet and artist who wrote over a century ago, a source of inspiration on how to be with this.

Today I chose this poem because I felt that to authentically embrace writing about a poem, it needed to speak to where I am. Here I am in ‘headache mode’. Headache mode describes a whole body, mind and heart ‘state’. Being in headache mode points to more than just a pain in my head. It describes a feel of being vulnerable and open, soft and raw. Often these days the pain is bearable if I can provide myself with particular conditions of comfort and ease. It invites a gentling of how I am with myself and kindness from others.

This sensitive self exists in a twilight world and shies away from bright lights, animated conversation and busyness. It feels necessary, like an oasis. I need to drink from this deeper well regularly to reunite with myself. In reality of course, apart from when the headache is at its worst, work and parenting don’t completely stop when I’m in headache mode and so I take the gentleness with me into work and into being with my son. It becomes an internal stance of self-kindness and a softer presence in the world.

So, I have shared with you a glimpse of how my longstanding headache pain was the ‘breaking of the shell’. It broke the shell of the part of me that wanted to be always out there and strong. The headache ‘season of my heart’ is tender and precious and it sheds a mellow light on my days, bringing peace, if I let it. I’ve learned to trust the physician of my body, who presents me with this pain and I drink the remedy with serenity (usually!).

The last line of the poem speaks to the core of me; communicating something fundamental. That pain often has meaning and can be essential. Essential in that it is needed and essential in that it strips us to our essence. Perhaps some greater mystery is at work, that we are part of, that makes pain into a ‘sacred’ path, if we find a way to heed the call.

Ps. Join us for our indepth mindfulness course where we can explore together how acceptance of challenging situations, like pain, can help make them more bearable, and how we can cultivate a relationship with the body that supports our wellbeing. There is also the Mindfulness Meets Mystical Poetry contemplative online course which will bring alive the poetry of ancient and modern day poets who write of mindfulness, compassion, wisdom and mystical themes.

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so I place them on what is beautiful in this world.

And I fold them in prayer, and they

draw from the heavens

light.

by St Francis of Assisi
interpreted by Daniel Ladinsky

A few days ago I was sitting and practicing with a sadness I felt around how life has changed due to the pandemic. As I sat, my attention settled into a more fundamental part of myself. I found I could rest back into appreciating the wonder and beauty of our world, which is always there no matter what goings on are going on.

I feel that this is what St. Francis is showing us in the first two lines in this poem from the book Love Poems from God. For me an image comes of hands being placed with care and gratitude on the bark of a tree, a loaf of bread, the cheek of a child, a beautiful object, a beloved pet. The palms of the hands are so sentient. I do feel how they can absorb and also give. I think that in a way St. Francis is also using hands as a metaphor for attention. In our mindfulness training we learn that what we place our attention onto has the power to change our mind/heart. So, in worrying times, let’s place it on what is beautiful. For me this feels like sustenance and renews my faith in life.

And then, what happens when we place our palms together? What is imbibed then? St. Francis says this can draw ‘from the heavens, light’. My meditation practice can feel like this (on a good day!), like a kind of prayer. Like a way to connect with love and compassion, which are at work each day and night both within me (albeit in a modest way and frequently masked by extensive displays of human imperfection!) and in the world. This is not to gloss over the suffering which we may be painfully aware of individually and collectively, and it’s not about living in la-la-land unaware of how much malintent and stupidity humans are capable of. For me, it’s about consciously uniting ourselves with our pre-existing capacity for goodness anyway – creativity, compassion, joy, selflessness, integrity it’s all here. It’s about seeing this all around us. It is there in the small details of our lives and in the big stories of our life-times. It is here in this moment. It is everywhere.

PS. If you would like to do a course devoted to practicing with the intention of remembering the Wonder of the Everyday you might want to consider this which begins in early January. You are also warmly invited to a free taster session for this course on Friday 10th December 2021 at 7pm here.

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Indeed I am His
choir.

by St. Thomas Aquinas

When I rest in body awareness, I allow the field of experience which is my body to speak to me. I hold the intention to listen with gentleness. This morning my neck felt dense and tight, my heart felt expansive and tingly, my skin was alive with cold and my head felt painful and contracted.

What would it be like to let each of these not just speak but sing to my listening awareness? Something about singing raises the possibility of harmony or disharmony, but it also enlivens my heart.

Then, with the final words – Indeed I am His choir – somehow the possibility of disharmony dissolves. I no longer ‘own’ my experience, instead it is part of the music and rhythm of the universe.

How do you feel about the word His? I don’t doubt that it resonates for some and jars for others. For me, although it does jar initially, I find I can look beyond it and see it as a signpost pointing in the direction of my ever-changing and evolving sense of ‘something greater’, for want of a more eloquent way of saying it…

Of course, I am not a Catholic, not Italian and not born into a noble family to become a spiritual master – all of which Saint Thomas Aquinas was. So, when I read this poem, I receive it across an unquantifiable gulf of difference. And yet despite this, I experience the poem as landing unimpeded into my practice and delivering a profound lesson with concise elegance. I hope that St. Thomas Aquinas would be pleased that his universal wisdom is still being received (in a hopefully recognisable form!) 800 years after he wrote it down.

PS. If you’d like to explore together the Power of Awareness during a practice day on the 20th of November, have a look Mindfulness Practice Days for more info…

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by Pedro Salinas y Serrano
Translated from Spanish by Paul Weinfield

This one, from the Spanish poet of a century ago, came to me at the end of a beautiful, cold evening with a beautiful and warm-hearted friend, as part of a hand-bound, carefully collated selection of poems for my birthday. What a gift!

The birthday, as well as caring for a dear friend in the last stage of his life, are both calls to wake up to the preciousness of this life, to live it fully, and to see what’s important. Fresh perspective on things that may not be such a big deal as they seemed, fresh imperative to ‘raise life high’. As Mary Oliver says in her poignant poem When Death Comes: I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world…

And how to do that, waking up? To me, it is a practice: a remembering again and again, a losing it and finding it. Luckily, there are new opportunities every day to wake up, as ‘day calls you to your life: your duty.’ How utterly wonderful.

PS If you’d like to join us in the practice of waking up to life, there are free daily practice sessions inviting you to rest in the freshness of the moment…

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