Steve and I went to a yoga retreat on our first weekend away together. Ojo Caliente. Our plan was to stop at Hokoji Zendo. Steve made fresh carrot juice and picked me up in his raspberry Chevy. We stopped at this giant crack in the earth. I can barely see the Rio Grande at the bottom it’s so far down. We walk across bridge, look over fence. Less than halfway across Steve says, This is as far as I go. We look down before we turn. That’s when Steve sees an un-moving body, a quarter of the way down to the river. A shoe was a little farther down. The body blends so well with the sage it takes a while for me to see him. It’s not until we are at Hokoji drinking tea and eating banana bread that we tell Edwina. She helps me realize WE SAW A BODY. Maybe we should do something.
~
Zen Master, Annabelle Boissevain, said something like, once you are on the path (of awakening) there is no longer anyone in your way. The person or thing in our path is not in conflict with us getting back to our path. That person is our path.
Sitting practice is like that, all together, all levels, abilities, life experiences. It’s not like all the expert meditators go away and sit together. It’s not like learning Tango, levels one through five.
~
Every morning before I get in my car or on my bike to meet the world, I promise aloud, I’ll be with all things, though I know I will fail. Trungpa Rinpoche in The Sacred Path of the Warrior imagines the archer’s bow is gentleness and the arrow is action. He says, shoot the arrow and the world gives us a message if we hit the target or not. Then he says, “when you trust in these messages, the reflections of the phenomenal world, the world begins to seem like a bank, a reservoir of richess”*
~
Even after calling the police Steve and I take our time driving back to the Gorge Bridge. The place was filled with cop cars, uniformed officers and yellow tape. The police said after we made the call it still took 30 minutes to spot the body. The police had seen the white van parked at the rim, had been searching, even with binoculars, all week. They were talking about Steve’s eyesight like he had a super power. I wondered why we didn’t act with more haste? Why didn’t I realize what to do? When we closed our eyes all weekend during the yoga retreat, the image of the body was imprinted in our brains.
~
Chögyam Trungpa says “no to ungenuiness, no to carelessness or crudeness, no to lack of wakefulness.” Where was my wakefulness? Partly I could not understand the implications of what we saw. My mind was dumb to our questions. Is finding a body an emergency?
Tara Brach says, “Trauma is when we have encountered an out of control, frightening experience that has disconnected us from all sense of resourcefulness or safety or coping or love”. My brain protected me from what I saw. No matter what I wanted to do or think, the result of dealing with the shock had to go though its stages and play its way through my body.
Sometimes I cannot be with all things. I chant to stop self-clinging, the idea that the world is made for my own pleasure and ego fortification. So that’s my practice. I have promises and intentions and then I can watch what actually happens, like Trungpa’s bow and arrow. To see how my mind and body flail and sputter in the face of actual life and death humbles me.
~
On thursday my friend Katherine and I saw about 15 planes flying in a line. Slow and low. She said it’s like a funeral procession. Minutes later I looked down at my little phone screen and got a message… a death…. Mmmm. If I try to over-correct my practice like a disobedient Shih Tzu, I am missing not only the moment but the magic. Could I trust the actual practice, my somatic experience? There are times when I don’t have the privilege of making a choice about how I feel, respond. Could I be gentle with that old reptilian brain?
~
On five dollar tuesday Claudia and I saw this sad and spacious movie. It took me three days to get over my sadness (about the same amount of time to exorcize the last of the movie popcorn). I realized that even though the movie seemed real and slow, the filmmaker was obsessed with repetition with little natural progression or change. There was all this space and no room for play.
Gertrude Stein says, “no repetition, only insistence.” What seems like repetition for me is not. Each action is new. I am different today as I wash my hair and scrub the soles of my feet. I wake up today and I think with some joy that it is morning and that means I slept, and will eat breakfast, then ride through the leaves, then see my students. Maybe. Or maybe something that gets in my way will be the new path. I don’t know.
~
I can light a stick of incense for someone who died thursday, and for one, who 15 years back, parked his van, climbed a giant fence and sailed over the edge.
~
I can leave my house, climb on my one speed and stop at the light and go at the next.
~ o ~