I never understood the saying, Our kids are our teachers. Actually, I’d go further.  I rolled my eyes whenever I heard it.  I thought it was one of those trite adages like another one that I love to hate, It is what it is.

Then one day last fall, the universe hit me over the head with the truth of that statement.  Grace, Whit and I were walking to the playground in Harvard Square.  Grace was in the middle of a long-winded story when I glimpsed a friend standing by the gate of the playground.  She waved at me and shouted hello.  “Hi! So glad to see you!” I responded, waving enthusiastically.  When I dropped my hand to recapture Grace’s I found that she had crossed her arms angrily across her chest.  She’d planted her feet in a classic I am NOT happy stance, stubbornly remaining behind as Whit and I kept walking.  I turned back to her.  “Gracie, what’s up?”  She shook her head, screwed up her eyes, and I saw tears rolling down her cheeks. I dropped Whit’s hand to hurry back to her, crouching down in front of her.

“Well, sometimes, when you see an adult and you are excited to see them you stop listening to me. Sometimes I feel like you are not paying attention to me. And you always tell me interrupting is wrong. But then…” she hesitated, “then you do it yourself sometimes?” Her voice wavered and I could tell she was not sure if what she was saying would get her in trouble. I wrapped her in a huge hug as I realized the wisdom of her words.  I whispered that she was right, that I needed to be more careful, that she was a thousand times right and thank you for reminding me.

The ways that Whit teaches me are somewhat different, though the lesson is always the same.  Mostly he makes me laugh, which is in its own way a tug back to the reality of my life.  One morning as we sat at school waiting for the classrooms to open, I had Grace on one side of me and Whit on the other. Absently, I said, “What do you guys want to talk about?”

“Let’s talk about our feelings,” Whit said firmly.

I was impressed. My little sensitive soul. Moments later he was vigorously kicking my sneaker with his boot.

“Whit! What are you doing?” I asked him.

“What do you feel, Mummy? Do you feel pain?”

Ah. Those feelings are the ones he wanted to talk about.

Occasionally, though, he blindsides me with tremendous wisdom.  A week or so ago Whit and I took Grace to camp to drop her off.   I went in with her and Whit stood outside, uncharacteristically pensive. When I came out I took his hand and we headed back to the car. As we walked, he said to me, “Mummy, it looks like it is going to rain.” I was distracted, as usual, and murmured, “yeah, yeah.” The sun was shining and I wanted to get him to his camp. He yanked my arm, stood stock-still, pointed at the clouds, and said, “Mummy! It really looks like rain. Look at those clouds.”  I looked up, annoyed to be hesitating for this long moment.  “Do you see, Mummy?” he asked me insistently.  I hurried him to the car.

Fifteen minutes later it was pouring.  Not only was he accurate about the rain, he was accurate about the clouds – the ones that blind me to the truth in every moment. It is what it is.

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Be back soon.

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DISCLAIMER: Notice that I just used the words problem, opinion, meaning, misunderstood, why, think and misjudge at the same time. Watch your step, and don’t take my word for any of this.

Glossary of Misconceptions

Attachment – Oooh la la. We think attachment means loving devotion, as in “attached at the hip.” But sometimes that isn’t love, is it? When we’re intoxicated by romance (or just intoxicated) we might want to stay attached forever. Don’t leave me! I can’t live without you! But attachment becomes uncomfortable and confining, suffocating and debilitating. And it doesn’t only mean clinging to what we like, it also means rejecting what we don’t like. Attachments are desires and aversions that we can’t let go of; the places we get emotionally, physically and mentally stuck. Life itself never sticks. So when an attachment gets ripped from our grasp by the ebb and sway of life as it is, we hurt. Attachments are the source of our suffering and unfulfillment. Can we ever let ourselves stop hurting? Can we ever be satisfied and happy with life as it is? The dark truth is that we are often attached to our suffering. We relive it over and over in our minds and reignite familiar, painful feelings. Sometimes we’re not quite sure who we would be if we didn’t have our unfulfillment to fill us up. The funny thing is, when we drop an attachment we find out that we’ve lost nothing at all.

Non-attachment – Boo hiss! Who wants non-attachment? That sounds downright sinister and at the very least indifferent. But non-attachment isn’t inhumane, unconcerned or indifferent. It simply means that when the ebb and sway of life carries us along, we can let go because we see all of it in a different way. It doesn’t create the absence of feeling or smug disregard. It allows instead the complete acceptance of all feelings and circumstances as they are, empty and impermanent. We hurt, and then we stop hurting. We grieve, and then we stop grieving. We are free. When we truly love someone or something, we grant them freedom from our own preferences. We neither clutch nor reject. Non-attachment is the nature of life itself: it keeps going. Non-attachment allows us to love one another and life as it is regardless of whether we like it right now or not. It gives rise to trust and cultivates faith in something far greater than what we wish: life as it is. Non-attachment is selfless compassion.

Ego – Uh-oh. Now the party’s over. Who invited the deadly sins? Envy, anger, greed, pride and all the rest are sure signs of ego. Thankfully I don’t have any of those symptoms if I do say so myself! There: that’s ego too. Ego is you when you are talking to yourself. “I like this; I don’t like that. I think so; I don’t think so. I agree; I disagree.” Ego is the voice of the thinking mind, the mind that conceives, perceives, measures, judges, evaluates, picks and chooses, likes and dislikes, clutches and rejects from the standpoint of a separate “I.” There is nothing wrong with ego, or thinking. Only most of your thoughts are not pleasant, and egoism is by nature self-serving and fearful. The attachment to ego is our most pernicious attachment. Still, we do not aim to destroy ego, just suspend its driving privileges!

True Self – Now here’s a term I keep running into in peculiar places. What is true self or true nature? When you dig down deep into your psyche, examine your honest feelings, and find the courage to say what you really think and do what you really want, is that true self? No, that’s ego. True self is you when you are not thinking about or serving yourself at all. You’re not formulating likes and dislikes based on conversations with yourself. There is no “I” in true self. There is no “self” in true self. But there is everything else. The whole universe, in fact. That’s what makes the true self true: it’s not just your idea. Your true self is the source of infinite wisdom and eternal, unconditional love, the real “you” you might bump into some night when it’s dark and quiet.

***

Just as I finished writing this, I went into my daughter’s bedroom to tuck her in to sleep.

“Will you snuggle with me?” she asked in the shadowy light, and I laid sideways on the rim of the twin bed. We’ve outgrown the bed, you see, but not each other.

I remembered all the nights we’d shared this hour and place. She on my lap, in my arms, in the rocker, in the crib, until she was weightless in slumber.

“If I could have one wish, it would be that nothing would change from the way it is now,” she whispered.

“Me too,” I said. “But I’ll still love you more than anything else. More than any number I can count or even imagine.”

“Me too,” she said. “That’s how I love you too. And I’ll always be your baby,” she reassured us. Then night’s calm descended into the spaces we’d left behind. Every night, every day, every hour, we leave all of it behind.

***

This is how I see the truth, and this is how I live my faith. Not by definition. I sincerely encourage you to just keep going, and forget whatever it is you call it.

Reprinted from March 2008, because we always forget what is important to remember, and remember what is important to forget.

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One of my favorite finds this year is Katrina Kenison herself. Our new friendship is a pretty amazing story that Katrina began telling on her own blog. I’ll fill you in on the rest when I see you in Boston. It will be an extraordinary day. Or, if you believe in magic as much as I do, you will find it to be another perfectly ordinary day.

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This is an important question, because it points to the heart of all our relationships, whether those relationships are with a person, place or thing. Frankly speaking, we always expect to get something out of our relationships – something like happiness or wholeness, even something as benign as respect or validation. When we expect to be enriched by a relationship we invest ourselves in an external source of fulfillment. We place the responsibility for our own well being in something or someone else: a better job, a newer city, the right mate, a benevolent teacher or wise leader. If we look closely, we might see how deeply we want to relinquish responsibility for ourselves.

That never works, and if it appears to, it doesn’t work for long.

Continue reading this post on Shambhala SunSpace, and please leave a comment there if you choose. I want to hear what you have to say.

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When you ask yourself “Why not?” you may find yourself in motion, across a vivid and unpredictable landscape, over impossible mountains and beyond the deep blue water’s edge, where you surprise yourself, once and for all, by getting wet. – Momma Zen

I’m flying over the ocean, across a vivid and unpredictable landscape, over immense peaks, impossible heights and unfathomable distance. I’m coming home from an island retreat, and although I didn’t quite take to the surf like some in my family did, I went far enough to get wet.

Our lives are always calling us to step out from an island retreat and into the water. Beyond our false and insular views of “me, my, I” and into the ocean of true reality, true connection. Farther than the familiar edge that halts us, and through the question that dissolves all fear: why not?

Initiative is what takes you everywhere. There is never an absence of information in our lives. There is as much inspiration as sand. But we are all plagued by a shortage of initiative, like surfers stuck on shore, waiting for waves that will never come far enough to transport them forward.

Thanks to Terri Fischer and Julie Rowntree Bartel, I’ll be in Brookfield, Wisconsin on Saturday, August 21. I’ll be at YogAsylum giving an afternoon workshop. I’ve never been there, but I hear that Brookfield isn’t that far from Milwaukee (15 minutes) or Madison (an hour). For that matter, it’s not that far from Chicago (90 minutes). Some would say it’s close to Iowa City, Cedar Rapids or even Indianapolis. All I know is it’s not too far for me. Go to this website, scroll to the bottom of the page, and click the More Events  link to register.

Thanks to Mindy Tsonas and her husband Alex, I’ll be in Boston on Saturday, September 18 leading my first Mother’s Plunge on the east coast. Naturally, we’ll be on the waterfront. Inevitably, we’ll get wet.  Registration is now open.

Terri, Julie and Mindy all did the inconceivable. They took a bit of information, added a dusting of inspiration and then took the next step. The next step is the only step that matters.  Like a wave, it lifts you up and into the ride of your life. Whatever distance you think you can’t cross, I promise you, it’s not that far to the water.

We need to push further, to take an immense leap all the time. Sometimes, looking back, we wonder why we are doing all this, and sometimes we think, why not? –Trungpa Rinpoche, True Perception: The Path of Dharma Art

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Edited to add: Winners of this giveaway are Shana and Jim. But the commenters have already given me the grand prize. Thank you, everyone!

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No. I never go looking for Inspiration. I let it arrive, and it does, as surely as a breath.

I have no doubt that eventually, and right on time, the temperature will rise, the molecules will combine and the conditions will combust in a peculiar gust of words that skitter across the page. They will gather mass and velocity, direction and duration, and conclude themselves before my deadline. How does that happen? To tell you the truth, I have no idea. It’s like asking how an inhalation turns into an exhalation.

The waiting is torturous, although I’m not really waiting, and I’m not really tortured. I’m busying myself with what comes along, like writing this post on Inspiration, because I promised to follow up the earlier post about Information, and because the universe is prompting me. That’s what happens, you see, by itself. Inspiration arrives in invisible bits and fits, vapors and swirls, and it’s only when something comes out of it, something is done with it, that it can properly be called Inspiration.

Inspiration is the thing that got you here, but of course it’s not here.

Last week I was in Vroman’s bookstore in Pasadena and I naturally inspected the stock of Hand Wash Cold. They had several copies on the shelves under Inspiration. I was happy to find it on the shelves, although you know by now I have a curious relationship with that thing called Inspiration. The Vroman’s staff is very good to me, though, and they’ve been taking the book from the back of the store and stacking it beside the cash registers. That’s where it appears in front of a shopper’s unsuspecting eyes and they do something with it. They buy it. Inspiration is for dust, but the action front and center in our lives, my friends, is enlightened.

***

I’ve done quite a few radio interviews for Hand Wash Cold. I’ve talked to people who liked me and who didn’t like me; those who read the book and those who only read the back cover of the book; those who wrangled or mangled my name. But none have been quite as inspiring as this one, an hour-long one, with a 13-minute prelude in which you can learn something really inspiring about meditation’s remarkable effectiveness in treating anxiety. Enlighten yourself by doing something with it right now.

Last week my daughter finished fourth grade.

At the beginning of the year her teacher asked the students to make a time capsule from a cardboard cylinder and fill it with artifacts. Inside went a self-portrait; a hand print; names of favorite foods, movies and books; and a list of goals for the year ahead. She opened it on the last day of school, and this was what it said:

What I would like to learn this year:
1. Pi
2.More long division
3.More multiplication
4.To type

What I would like to accomplish in school this year:
1. Math Field Day
2. Student Council

What I would like to accomplish at home this year:
1. Middle split
2. Back handspring

What I would like to do to become a better person:
1. Volunteer at the aquarium

I record these things here not for her, but for me. I had not one thing to do with anything on this list, and she did them all. I no longer know what pi is or does, and any handsprings I do are mere metaphors. I post it to remind myself that her life is her own, and to make space for it to grow in every direction. To trust her able hands, agile mind, limber legs and passionate heart. To delight in the scenery and to marvel at the change. To keep company with her – silent, loving, loyal company – and to leave her off my list.

Sitting quietly, doing nothing, spring comes and the grass grows by itself.

For an up-close view of what I mean, see what my friend Pixie saw in my patch of paradise. The photo credit is hers.

We are enslaved by our understanding of “I”

We are each imprisoned with an I. The I that you think you are, and the I that you think you’re not. The I that you like on good days, and more often the I that you don’t like. The I you interpret, analyze and diagnose. The I you want and wish for; the I that you want to become. The I in obsession, and the I in addiction. And so on and so on, a life sentence of solitary confinement without release. Four dank walls and a hard cot: call it your “comfort zone.”

Imprisonment begins with an I.

We are enslaved by our understanding of who and what we are. By our opinions and preferences. By our ruminations, fantasies, ideas and values. By our knowledge and understanding. Understanding is limited. But our true nature is boundless. How can we understand something without limits? We can’t even come close, but we keep banging our head away at it, like battering a tin cup against jail bars.

What has shot me off in this wretchedly abstract direction is something simple and concrete: our appetite for information, and the habitual way we confuse information with action. Many of us want to change the way we live, and we start by informing ourselves. I can see the point. It’s why, for instance, you might read this blog. Sorry to disappoint you, but other Buddhist bloggers shell out far more information and explanation than I do! Armed with a self-righteous view, they might even yell and fight! Prison riots are exhilarating in their way, but they always end up lengthening your sentence.

The Buddha Way lies outside thinking, analysis, prophesy, introspection, knowledge and wise explanation – Dogen Zenji

It’s tempting to think that the information we assemble will amount to something. But it doesn’t. You have a world of information at your fingertips and see? It hasn’t changed a thing about you or the world. You’re still looking for something more. No, these days we are swimming in an ocean of information and drowning in a neverending stream of goopy slop on top.

To put it another way, immersing yourself in information is like trying to learn to drive by studying the motor vehicle code.

This is the first in a series of posts about information, inspiration and initiative. It’s important to discern the difference between them. Imprisonment begins with an I, and so does independence. For a scent of open air, listen to this conversation recorded on Amy Tiemann’s podcast a few months ago. See if you can catch the drift of an unobstructed breeze. Then make your move through the wide open door.

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