not getting caught up in the finite

today's meditation is one of those when there's nothing to do but to take refuge again and again and again in the breath flow. towering thought waves suck attention under their massive momentum. they sweep awareness brutally along. i am literally under water at the wild mercy of mental activity. at the times when i catch myself reacting to the thoughts with more thoughts i manage to tenuously cling to a thread of breath. from the horizon of this vast turmoil i hear a faint recurring echo. it will go away. i will sit through this. and so i do. while it is a struggle i emerge from meditation with a renewed sense of watchfulness. i realize what would happen if i don't strive to stay close to the breath as much as i can. i would block grace and be unable to see what i ought to see. whatever the contents of the mental activity and even though they feel so real and do contain some grains of truth, like rare grains of gold in a huge mound of sand, they distract me from being connected to my own true nature, from taking what are reflections in the mirror of consciousness to be consciousness itself, from getting caught up in the finite waves in the infinite ocean of consciousness.

i listen. i show up.

there i am preparing for a meeting with my editor and i get this recurring inner message. be there earlier. the first couple of times i dismiss it as a tendril of worrying. really. i am making sure i will be on time. at the time when we made the appointment time she made clear that she had a lot of phone calls to make before seeing me. so i am ready to disregard this prompting as just a recurring thought. but it keeps returning. stronger and stronger. not a shouting voice. no snowballing, i mean, i don't see the mind get caught up in reacting thoughts like if i don't go there earlier this and that would happen or not happen. here's what i finally decide. i'll go into her neighborhood half an hour earlier and take a swirl through a favorite grocery store and see how i feel at that point. so i do. i even get a cup of coffee and sip as slow as i can. but this thought is relentless. it steps up intensity. so i think to myself. okay, what the heck, i'll be outside her house a few minutes earlier. check this out. when i am a couple of houses from my editor's i see these two women getting into a car. i immediately recognize the one getting on the passenger's side is my editor. the first thought i have is this. she has forgotten my appointment. i wave and pace up at the same time. it turns out that a friend is taking my editor to the hospital. it's an emergency. the bottom line is this. if i didn't show up a few minutes earlier i would have been left on the doorstep. i would have been waiting and waiting and outraged. instead i show up and offer her healing blessings. thank you, my innermost and highest self.

keep eye on the highest.

i had my share of travel days. i would love to go to places far away and just roam. now that i have a solid meditation practice all i need is to go into the meditation closet, sit on the mat, close my eyes, settle attention in the breath flow, and i enter this space that is way larger than the body. it is actually sort of like the deep outer space. i can't see the edge of it. yet it is held within my being. with every breath this sense of marvel builds and builds and builds. there are days that i come out of meditation reluctantly because there are things that have to be taken care of. the desire to go deeper and higher into this space gets stronger with each meditation. as a matter of fact when i first got the call that hwubby was hit by a taxi in new york among my very first thoughts was this. o, no, i hope i can keep meditating every day. as it turns out i get to stay in a two bedroom garden level apartment in a townhouse all that time. i have it all to myself. not only do i get to meditate everyday i even have my own meditation room. one three a.m. i awake to this magical vista in the courtyard. overnight snow transform the space into a fantasy landscape. bluish white domes sit on top of pots. sparkling white snakes cling to tree branches. as i take in this i hear this message from within. keep your eye on the highest and you'll be fine. i feel more than fine. i feel i am with life and life is with me.

make space for grace. let go.

a friend just finds out hwubby's pedestrian knockdown episode. she says, that's awful, i'm sorry you had to go through such horror. not missing a beat hwubby says kindly and sincerely, no, i don't think of it this way, not anymore, i really look at it as a growing experience that is still unfolding. our friend says, how so? hwubby says, in the moment when i realize the taxi is coming right at me at, i'd say, thirty-five miles at least, the first thought i have is, why is he doing this, and then the next thought is, what's going to happen, and all this happen in like a nano of a millisecond, and then i am just filled with this clear certainty, don't resist, let go, and i do, and the doctors say that's probably why i have sustained less injuries than it would have been, i have no head injuries, spinal injuries, no surgery needed in the multiple-fractured pelvis, and now as i am dealing with picking up the pieces in work and in life i have to keep reminding myself, let go, let go, and i can see how it is all making space for what's supposed to happen to happen. our friend listens intently with wide open eyes. indeed. hwubby is right. knock out the old stuff. make space for grace.

patience rules. perseverance trumps all else.

the great people of japan are showing the world how to live in the present. everyday i include them in my meditation. but it is they who are blessing me with their shining examples. their quiet, steady presence don't make the stuff of spectacular news headlines. patience rules. perseverance trumps all else. not really sexy, catchy to the physical eyes. yet, i know from my own one-step-forward, ten-step-back journey on the path, the wings of patience and perseverance hold me up and lift me through tsunamis and massive earthquakes in turbulent mental waters and roller-coaster circumstances. okay, i am wrong to say there are absolutely no drama that can be captured in this seemingly muddled toil. how about this? a road that is split into chasms looking like miniature grand canyon during the earthquake is repaired and paved brand new after three days. three days. as my guru says, again and again, to this effect, with patience, you can attain anything.

he doesn't understand me. true?

a while back, like nineteen years back, several months into my stay in the ashram, i had this encounter with a swami. this memory hasn't surfaced for this long until now when i am reflecting on the impact of a regular meditation practice on the arc of life, rather than being tunnel-vision, nitpicking the day-to-day meditation experiences. so, back to the encounter. this swami is not into small talk. really, really, not into it. we are walking on a path through the sprawling woods on the ashram grounds, in opposite directions. i don't't expect him to say anything to me at all. so i am surprised when he says, suk wah. my mind goes blank. his eye stays on me, and says, how are you doing? by knee jerk reaction i blurt out, fine. i am all but fine inside. i cannot sit still on the meditation mat for more than a minute. the mind is constantly churning out thoughts, feelings and reactions that are judgmental, anxious, angry, sad, blah blah blah. and they all feel important to me. they are so real. i am so frustrated that meditation can't make them go away. recently i see this horrific image of innumerable cargo containers chaotically piling on top of each other after the tsunami in japan. that's sort of how chaotic and out of control my mind is at that point. those unyielding mental tsunami totally gut out my connection to my inner self. i want to ask the swami an intelligent and smart and thoughtful question to show him what an evolved yogi i am. but, oy, i can't think of a word. i am babbling on and on here. in the moment it lasts exactly that. a moment. no wonder the scripture says thought travels faster than the speed of light. anyway the swami pauses for a moment, and says to me, keep meditating. then he walks away. i remember now clearly my reaction to his words. i think to myself, no, you don't understand what i am going through.

nineteen years later. i realize he does know what i go through. that day on the path in the woods i am in a muddled state. the mind is going through a tsunami. i get swept up in the towering waves of dark thoughts, feelings and reactions. in the teachings of the buddha i take what's impermanent permanent. now i know all thoughts, feelings and reactions come. and go. without exceptions. unless i hold on to them. unless i feed into them. this is where my regular meditation practice take me across these turbulent waters. i gently return attention to the steady, rhythmic movement in the natural and easy breath while i notice and observe these mental waves. i don't treat one more important than the other. the differences in contents don't matter. what matters is my attention go underneath the contents and stay with the power of the throb that is obviously driving these mental waves.

yes, the swami understands me. he knows i have what it takes to keep meditating. he knows in time i will come to see what i need to see if i keep meditating. thank you, swamiji.

starting from square one. a higher square.

since meditation is about working on invisible stuff like habitual tendencies, limiting concepts and ideas, and so on and so forth how do i measure progress given my day-to-day meditation experience is mostly subtle. here's what i come to. it's kind of like i can't see and touch time but i can measure the impact of time. o, fig branches are bare. it's winter. o, fig branches start bearing fruit again. so it's spring. in a similar way i watch my thoughts, feelings, reactions. i don't take things personal anymore because i know with unshakable faith that nothing anybody does or say add or take away the fullness of my own self. naturally, then, it's easier for me to stay calm in otherwise what my ego self would consider upsetting. in fact, over the course of my teenage and young adult years there was this unyielding anguish that relentlessly gnaw at my heart. there were times it was so intense that i thought i was a hair close to going insane. now i know it was an expression of my earnest yearning to connect with my own self, the boundless place of inner calm, strength and joy. i didn't have the concept nor the language to comprehend what i was going through. i went through aborted attempts to set up a meditation practice, meaning there were times it really felt like i wasn't making any progress what with endless frustration and tumultuous mental turmoil. but the truth is i never really gave up. i keep coming back to it, starting from square one. now as i reflect on it, i see that i started on a square that is deeper and higher than the previous one. i just couldn't see it in the moment.