Meditation and Thanksgiving

I grew up in a family that was never particularly spiritual, and so it followed that Thanksgiving meals were never preceded by the traditional giving of thanks. This year, for the first time, though, in all the 25 Thanksgivings I've ever had, I gave thanks for the first time. There was nothing special about this though. It's not like I became a more grateful person by uttering a few words of thanks; I didn't feel touched or moved by my words; there was no transformative shift in my presence, being, or soul. But after all, why would I expect such a thing from mere concatenations of tongue, palate, lips, and breath?

A couple years ago in India I was introduced to meditation. The word for "meditation" in Tibetan in fact means habituation. If meditation is to be transformative as it is intended to be, it simply means to train the mind - habituating it to more positive forms of thinking while weeding out negative forms. Of all the meditation exercises I was led through in the 10 days that I spent at a retreat center in Bodh Gaya, there was one particular "loving-kindness" meditation that had a profound affect on me.

My mind felt calm and still that night - receptive to my environment as if I could open the door to welcome the universe. Venerable Lobsang Namgyal led us in the meditation. He had me meditating about my mother. How she spent so much time and energy in me from my very conception, how painstaking it was to carry me in her womb day in and day out, for months, causing her all sorts of discomfort. I let this sink in to my mind. I thought about the pain and sacrifice in giving birth to me, in clothing, feeding, and caring for me, care which any infant would surely die without. Her unconditional patience. Her unconditional love. I let this sink in to my mind. And then a very visceral memory came to me: of my mother rubbing vapor-rub on my back and chest as a child, under the incandescent glow of my night-stand lamp when I was sick and coughing in the middle of the night. It was this act of compassion of my mother, which I always thought to be medically useless but comforting nonetheless, which I always took for granted, that I suddenly (decades after the fact) felt profound gratitude for. Suddenly, and very unexpectedly, tears streamed like rivers down my face. They were tears of great sorrow and pain at first - the great shame I felt towards myself after realizing how incredibly selfish I have lived life. A feeling that I never at all deserved any of my mother's love, but she offered it anyway, time and again. And because I was witness to such an amazing act of love, I suddenly was overcome with immense joy, to finally open my eyes and see such a thing as true loving-kindness and compassion. To finally realize what the word "love" was intended to mean, and the immense sense of joy that followed. It felt as if a hundred hardened walls inside me had burst apart and let in a flood of compassion. And I felt different, so very different...as if a totally different person. It was the most liberating thing I've ever felt in my life. I continued the meditation exercise, thinking of how everyone and everything is like a mother to me, from the farmers who care for the food, to the sun giving such brilliance and life to this planet and its delicate ecosystem, to everyone and everything in this universe. I felt so energized with compassion in that moment that I instantly forgave those in my life whom I never thought possible to forgive; and I felt sudden pangs of pain for those whom I had unashamedly hurt, whom I never thought possible to feel sympathy for. I felt such a sudden and strong urge to genuinely apologize to them (which I ended up doing as soon as I finished retreat).

While Thanksgiving, or giving thanks, can never be a substitute for meditation, it does remind me though that there are many things and people that we all-too-often take for granted, that command deep gratitude from all of us. A passing "thank you" in the end remains mere words, and at most an intellectual tip of the hat towards those that sustain us. Meditation, on the other hand, is necessary to bring our essential core in line with living gratitude that goes so deep that even your cells are humbled with joy. But such an event, like the one I describe above, is but a mere moment stacked up against years and years of negative habituation. It may take a lifetime of meditation and there'll still be plenty of work for me to do to habituate myself to positive forms of thinking, and weeding out negative forms.

Clock Time

Daylight savings ended a couple weeks ago. I always thought turning back our clocks an hour every autumn only to turn it back forward in spring was a really pointless practice, "as if changing the clock would change time," I thought to myself when I was little. Later in my life in high school it was quite the opposite, because in most of October I was waking up in utter darkness; but with November came the graceful reprieve of waking with the sun, granted simply by changing the red symbols displayed on my clock. Nevertheless, I still thought it was a strange idea.

Finally, this year's daylight savings got me thinking of it as an important reminder of what "time" really is. That "clock time" is merely social convention and nothing else. It "exists" only to help us coordinate our plans with other people. The only true time that exists, however, is the present moment. The past is past, and the future is never experienced except as the present moment. Everything, without exception, happens in the present moment. This is simple, yet profound, and matters a great deal to really absorb this into my mentality. So, setting the clocks back is simply an agreement with the rest of society to do things an hour later than normal. It is becoming winter after all, and my karma is tied with that of the sun and the earth's rotation around it. Through this acceptance of "clock time" and daylight savings time for what they are, social conventions, I'm getting valuable spiritual practice by aligning myself with the universe. With that said, I'm going to bed.

Apple and Tea Leaves

Just this past Sunday I went with a friend for a hike under a blue sky, through trails of autumn leaves yellow orange and red. On the drive back we stopped by an orchard for some apples. I am eating one right now, and having it with some green tea. Every thing I eat, I try to really taste where it comes from, and what it really is. They are the soil from which they grew. The water, sometimes from the farmers, sometimes from rains carried from thousands of miles. The rays of the sun. The energy and care of those who tended them, the people that picked them, packed them, transported them, sold them. The "fire" from which I boil water for the tea. In fact, the whole universe can be found in this apple, and in these tea leaves. I try to let this soak in. So every time I eat something, it can be a spiritual practice, if I can remember to thank all the many people involved in this one apple, this one cup of tea, and remember that I am being nourished by all elements of the universe. On the surface this may seem like a self-centered thing to think. But I realize that it's not, if I just remember that "I" am merely an impermanent concatenation of all elements of the universe. An apple can remind me as long as I remain aware of it.

Candle

There is something peaceful about a lit candle - the way the flame gracefully moves, the soft light it gives, and its wax body with its ever-changing and transient life.

When I was a child, I used to revel in joy when summer storms knocked the electricity out, because that meant we would be using candles, and candles always gave me the feeling of inner peace and contentment.

These days I am rediscovering the awesomeness of candles as I keep my light-switches at the 'off' position. My whole body and mind relaxes as I brush my teeth, shower, and change my clothes in candle-light. Best of all, I fall asleep much easier as the darkness prepares me mind-and-body for it.

Sometimes what I find most peaceful about the candle is blowing the flame out, and just observing the tip of the wick fade from a fiery red-orange to a tiny pinpoint red, and finally flickers a super-tiny sub-atomic supernova, passing away, retiring into the night.