make the life that i choose to live a worthy one

the day's meditation is wonderful. i come away from the meditation seat like the velvety night cosmos that is sprinkled with starry glitter. a galaxy of, for the lack of a less cliche word, inspirations, fill my breaths. i am so on track to writing. hoo. what is the first thing that catches my eye? papers at my doorstep. left by hwubby for me to deal with. medical claims to process asap, that are yet to be filled out properly. i quickly spot certain signature spots that are still empty. bah. that means they have to wait until hwubby's home from a long day of medical appointments. can't go into mail today. bummer. what else is there crowding my doorstep and crying to be taken care of. documents to review, that carry long term financial consequences. this task to follow up. that task to follow through. before long a major delivery arrives, signaling the onset of a huge project that has to be completed in the next twenty four hours. faster than i can let out a breath this heaviness comes over me. just like that all those delightful writing glitter recede fast into the neighborhood of those one hundred billion galaxies that gazillions of light years away from planet earth.

the phone rings. it's hwubby. after the brief phone call i quickly realize my voice and tone are short and brusque. as i make my breakfast of egg white and ghee i recall these words of my guru.

make the life that i choose to live a worthy one. it is a matter of great fortune to rejoice in life having once sacrificed it. life is not like an an abandoned fruit. yet it requires absolute sacrifice.

well, well, well, after eleven months of perseverance i have finally arrived at the finale verses of the poem breakthrough. i have earned the rights to relish the fruits of my effort. and what is 'sacrifice' but that effort that gets me come closer to god, to my own true nature. and i know enough after twenty years on the path that despondency and discouraged are not attributes of what i am made of. what is required at  such times, at all times, is full faith and surrender. and i decide this is exactly what i am going to do. i call hwubby. i say, i am so sorry i was short and brusque, maybe that clash between left and right brain throws me off. he is just so happy that i call, totally empathetic. what a sweet life i have. a-hah. the life i choose to live is sweet and juicy and flavorful.

standing up again

yay. i'm going to be standing up again soon. here's why. i went through kneeling chair and ball chair before discovering i loved standing up in front of the computer. i wrote a novel standing in front of the power mac. i did quickbooks and quicken standing up. i emailed standing up. then a dear, dear friend, andrea, gifted me her retired ibook. in her words, so suk wah can go online wherever she wants. since then i've been sitting down for almost all of the computer dealings except finances. now that i've inherited hwubby's macbook pro and a 23 inch monitor looks like i'm on track to stand up again. there's something about standing up. somehow it seems to enable the back to be a little more upright. kind of doing mountain pose for an extended period of time. having said that i'm so grateful for andrea's kindness and generosity. i mean, i love my power mac. however you should see me standing like a jaw-dropped turtle waiting for email to go through, website to come up. it's great time to watch the breath though.

shiksa. chiksa torahnanda.

i'm having the whole house to myself. everybody have gone out hiking. clara says before leaving, make sure you go out of the house today, okay. and so i do. sitting under the umbrella on the back porch after lunch. after a morning of writing a sketch and chanting vishnu sahasranama. sip some coconut water. sit back and read some issac bashevis singer. i feel perfect. everything is perfect. speaking of singer. seriously. we have such similar temperament. and in terms of writing it amazes me to see a voice that i think to myself, this is as close as it gets to my voice. this is not coming out of analysis. so it's not mental. definitely gutteral. so when hwubby says, playing the role of my writing coach, what makes you say so? i don't have bullet points. all i can say is i have a chemistry with his way of writing. i guess this is kind of like being in love. i can describe all i can, rationalize all the brain knows why. he's gorgeous. he's a good listener. he makes me laugh. he lets me be who and what i am. in fact he encourages me to live out what i ought to be. he is nice to me. he takes care of me, always thinks of me, and on and on. yet i cannot explain why my heart skips a beat and my jaw drops every time i see him walk through the door. i cannot explain why we have so much fun just talking about nonsense. like i finish a singer story and call hwubby up and say, am i a shiksa? he says, not missing a beat, no, you are a chi-ksa. i say, chiksa torahnanda.

spontaneity. adventure. sense of wonder.

in all seriousness i'm sipping a summer smoothie, twirling my thumbs and chewing on this 'voice' thing. now i have to give a nod to this smoothie. totally cool, totally ayurvedic and so easy to make. soak some dates, work the hand blender in it, generously toss in freshly ground cardamom, and there you have it. i am lazy. i don't even strain it. i'd like to say i love the fiber and i don't like to waste anything. today i even put in a dash of handmade rose water. really. i can drink this all day long.

getting back to the serious business of figuring out this 'voice' thing. how to bring the two together? one poetic, sublime, the other hilarious, down-to-earth. i take a nice sip and the rich and deep aroma of cardamom sends off refreshing sensation in body and mind. i don't have it figured out. not yet. but i don't feel discouraged. it's like this morning i go into meditation with enthusiasm, faith and love. not a bit dampened by yesterday's experience. why would i be dampened? what was yesterday's experience. gee wiz i can't even bring it up to the mind what happened yesterday. all that happened vanished. only the present moment remains. and right now i recall the two cards that hwubby and i got from a deck of divine attributes before i left the ashram nineteen years ago. spontaneity. adventure. perhaps, maybe, they hold the clue to what i am contemplating. my guru says, let the sense of wonder be constant. i take another sip. i'm fascinated. who knew such magical alchemy could come out of two ingredients. all right, three, including water. cheers. to the sense of wonder.

even tripping up is grace.

no two meditations are the same. this much i know. but i don't know it can be this dramatic from one day to the next. yesterday was all sweet peace. here's how this morning goes. in the beginning it all seems to go as i have been doing the action sequence day in and day out. look. i get up, have my drink of chlorophyll, aloe, a little apple juice and psyllium, poop, - i cannot overstate what a huge difference pooping before meditation makes to the quality of meditation, but i'd better get back to the real drama of the day before i get carried away with pooping - where am i? o, right, then i wash the mouth and teeth and face. some gentle stretches. bow to four directions. bow to my meditation seat. so far, nothing is off track. yet somewhere around i put the earplugs and eyewraps in place i begin to sense something is off within. a little bit. very subtle. it's like the camera lens is slightly, very slightly, out of focus. so slightly that i just dismiss it.

i proceed to rigorously rub my hands to give a little tai chi bath to the eyes, face, head, neck and chest. as i am about to begin reciting 'a thousand mirrors,' the poem that i have been letting off my lips daily for one and a half years i hear a tiny whisper. you'll trip. i thought i knew what it meant. i'll trip over the poem 'breakthrough' which i am about halfway through memorizing. but as i type this now i realize that is the beginning of me getting out of the present moment. the onset of getting off center.

anyway words stream out of me swimmingly. in another corner of the mind the worry that i'll forget some part of 'breakthrough' loops like a stuck record. not loud. but enough to suck my attention out of the present moment. until suddenly i realize words stop flowing out of the vocal cord like a river's flow is obstructed by an unexpected boulder. my attention goes into shock. panic jams awareness. disbelief shakes up the mind. thought waves strike. negative thoughts. heavy thoughts. this can't be. it's impossible. so i try to gather myself, squeeze the scattered attention into the line. 'the reality of my existence is...is...is...' what is the word after 'is?' nothing comes. the brain jumps up and down and all around inside the skull. banggg. wangg. nothing comes. after a while and i don't know how long in terms of the linear passing of time i drag myself to the next verse. obviously i am still not totally in the present. because after 'each mirror was broken into thousands of fragments' i go right back to 'the reality of my existence is...' i struggle some more and go nowhere but round and round like a scared mouse. meanwhile negative emotions take this opportunity and make their appearance. discouraged is the main one. and exasperated too. i won't go into their extended family.

i begin to notice the breath is out of whack. so i do the only thing i know how to do in such dire circumstance. i turn attention to the breath. in a few rounds i watch the edginess in the breathing movement smooth out. then i hear this. relax. i take a deep breath in, a long breath out. a couple of more rounds later, conviction arises from deep within. i can't recall whether it comes with the inbreath or the outbreath. doesn't matter. they all come from the same place. anyway the message i get is this. i haven't forgotten the poem. really, i haven't. why would i even doubt that. scrap it.

with that i see what i need to do. move on to the next verse. and so i do. as i let the rest of 'a thousand mirrors' flow out of me i feel a refreshed, renewed resonance. 'destruction took its time. while grace was penetrating deeply i said to myself, people say grace is a shelter, why, then, am i losing all i have?'
indeed. 'all the reflections are grace. all the mirrors are grace. grace had revealed that everything is grace.' yes, even tripping up like this is grace.

as i step off the meditation mat i hear the inner self say, write with one voice.  'the power of grace takes me across,' ain't it the truth. ain't it the truth.

lord buddha food. chewing on my style.

i get this insight when i am making sweet rice. by the way, this dish of rice and milk brings to mind the scene where siddhartha is under the bodhi tree and realizes the truth. along comes sujata, a woman. she offers him rice and milk. he takes it. now is it because he realizes that torturing and depriving the body doesn't bring him closer to the truth? or he recognizes that he needs a body of strength in order to teach the truth to many? i don't care. all that matters is lord buddha as we know it, the teacher, is born. with this memory i just fall in love with this dish. milk. rice. just the sounds carry the vibe of calm and nourishment. besides it is super yum. more than yum. it is light and satisfying, a one pot meal for the season. i can see myself eating it breakfast, lunch and supper. so there i am stirring basmati rice in a little ghee, plenty of freshly ground cardamom and some milk. whole, not low fat or no fat. according to ayurveda, i need lubrication, meaning oil, to balance the dry heat of the season. besides, serious meditators do need a little bit of fat everyday. the key word here is 'little bit' and it has to be quality oil. ghee is the best. i think i am way off track here. where am i going? o, that's right, i have an insight. the thing is i have been chewing on something my editor says, now it reads like two separate books, one in the immortals world, one in the human world, you've got to make it one book. gee. what does that mean? i thought i worked so hard to bring the two together. meanwhile time goes by. cut to the learned brahmin. he says to me, what you say, don't change, the style, change. by the way i really resonate with his english. we hong kong chinese speak english kind of like that. especially cantonese chinese. which i am.

i digress. hmmm, yes, style. now this is really fascinating. the recurring thought that has been haunting me is this. what's wrong with my style? i don't get it. not yet. until this morning. i am meditating away. the breath is flowing in deep and long, refined like a lotus stalk. i watch thought waves ebb and flow. suddenly and quietly this appears. one is lyrical and sublime, the other is down-to-earth and funny. i have to confess. the urge to go with this and pile on more thoughts is huge. i barely manage to jot the key words down when another insight comes. there's nothing wrong with your style. now, isn't it something that the mind would default to the habitual tendency that something is wrong with me. something is wrong with my style. nothing's wrong with my style. but i do have to work the 'voice' to a certain way so it can be sublime, lyrical, down-to-earth and funny, all of those.

gee, i can already hear the thought shooting straight out of the state of poverty consciousness. this is so difficult.

to be continued.

let the fun begin.

here i am making breakfast and my cell rings upstairs. so for the next while i am bilateral tasking. talking with my editor and keeping an eye on my food. by the way i am having a new thing for the morning meal. an egg in a little rice milk lightly sweetened with jaggery. it fills me up the whole morning in a light way. back to my editor. she has these ideas come to her during the night. and, o, yes, we know those are usually the best stuff. the night energy is without the busy-ness of the day. very little mundane static. flashes and sparks from pure consciousness are less likely to be masked over. not that there aren't creative pulses during the day. it's just that our attention tend to be drawn outward in all kinds of ways. anyway by the end of our conversation i am so ecstatic. i feel like i am at the stage of examining the house of the book. the architecture is there. the bones are good. now i can, with my editor's help, plays with the flow of rooms, think of what furniture to put in which room, how to arrange them, what to do to make sure the purpose of the room is shining through beautifully, and so on and so forth. this is great. let the fun begin.

not yet. i will.

i am a little more baked. why do i say that? how do i know that? i can hear a teaching over and over for a long period of time. every time it's like, yeeeah, yeeeeah, yeeeah, riiiiight. case in point is this one. the yogic scriptures say the individual mind is a contracted manifestation of the supreme consciousness from which the entire physical universe that was, is and ever will be, arise. and therefore the individual mind has that kind of power which is essentially same as that from which stars, planets, galaxies, meteors burst forth. the only difference is scale. at one point, i think it's last year, and also several years prior, i even study this particular sutra. i learn its sound in sanskrit. i pore over the commentary. but meanwhile i am still pervasively affected by this recurring thought. i can't hold the whole book. i'm gonna lose it. i don't know how i am gonna finish it. think about it. imagine supreme consciousness says, hmmm, no, i can't make something one million times the mass of the earth. by the way, that happens to be the sun.

a couple of days ago i come across this teaching from another source. this time something deep within me echoes and moves. i still see the recurring thought. but i also see a steady surge of will and clarity along with this message. i don't have everything figured out. not yet. i will. i feel this refreshed and renewed reverence for the power of my mind. in its universal form it creates flowers, birds, waterfalls, meadows, rainbows, vegetables, fruits, all kinds of wonderful, marvelous and delicious things. of course my mind has the power to produce a wonderful, marvelous and delicious novel. of course. how can it be otherwise.

this all happens very quietly as i sip ginger tea. is this a breakthrough? an a-ha moment? light bulb moment? i suppose i could call it all that. but it is the fruit of years of baking off the mental bondage.


 

hanuman. christmas carol

i begin to add a new thing to my schedule. not exactly a new thing. there's really no new thing under the sun. okay, this stirs me to recall a favorite story, something from the hindu epic ramayana. hanuman, the monkey king, plunges into the depths of the ocean to look for sita's ring. what does he see when gets to the ocean floor? one ring? no. two rings? no. he sees tens of thousands of rings, all identical to sita's. aaaah. what is happening right now happened before and will happen again.

anyway, i digress. i decide to meditate before going to sleep. in one of those moments when i am alternating between sleep and awake something comes to me. identify a few, probably three, scenes at different points in suk wah's life, i mean suk wah the heroine in the novel, where she experiences an awakening within even though in the moment she doesn't have the understanding and vocabulary to recognize it as such. but as the narrative unfolds her awareness expands, elevates and clarifies as a result of her interactions with the exotic characters from the chinese immortal world she recognizes all these wonderful things that are within.

hey, isn't this somewhat the structure of 'christmas carol?' the three immortal stooges, phoenix, monkey and pig, show suk wah scenes from her life...

learn by doing

in my own way i am freaking out. i ask my editor, am i being too ambitious for the first novel? she says, are you overreaching? i'd say yes if it's a lesser writer, but you are a very, very good writer. the challenge is, you don't know how to build a book. the first couple of drafts, you can just write and write creatively. and you write beautifully and poetically. but in the third, fourth drafts you have to be strategic.

i begin to see that i have to retrain the mind. i can write eating lox and bagels for forty pages but then i lose the story. i say, yeah, now it's about craftsmanship. she says, but then i don't want you to lose the poetry. aaaah. i have to learn how to do both things at the same time, to be strategic and poetic. how? i know only one way. learn by doing. the guru says, meditation shows you how to meditate. it's the same principle in writing a book, or anything in life for that matter. stay in the present. listen. keep at it.