Thoughts Happen

Home is Where the Baskin Robbins Used to Be

Almost two years ago a brand new library opened in my town, and as I sat listening to a jazz concert on opening weekend in the beautiful community room with its ocean view, I suddenly had a feeling as if a voice was whispering to me, “This is my home.”

I moved to different towns at the ages of 2, 12, 18, 23, and 31, and never developed a strong root system anywhere as an adult. While my childhood home in Pennsylvania held pleasant memories, none of my extended family lived there, so when we moved across the country when I was 12 (to Las Vegas, of all places—that was a culture shock), there were no strong ties to keep me connected.

Consequently I’ve always felt like a bit of a newcomer—even in California, where finding someone my age who’s a native is a rarity. But something about the library opening, whether it was because I’d now lived here longer than I’d lived anywhere else, or because I was getting in on something from the beginning, made me really feel for the first time that I was home.

But I was wrong.

 This was made clear to me last weekend by the closure of the Baskin Robbins. It’s just one of a slew of changes to the commercial landscape of my community that I find more and more difficult to roll with gracefully the longer I live here. Because where is my home if my home keeps changing all the time? And then it hit me.

Change is my home. It’s really all any of us has—the neverending path that rises in front of us and drops away behind moment by moment. Sometimes it is made very clear, such as for the astronaut waiting to leave the earth, and sometimes it is subtle; you go to pick up an ice cream cake for dessert and the store is cleaned out and empty, without even a sign to show what used to be there. It’s not always a very comfortable place to live, but it’s what we’ve got. 

Photo courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/pagedooley/ / CC BY 2.0

It's a Wonderful Path

I spent the past two days at a meditation training weekend, which basically means I spent a lot of time sitting with my thoughts. This is both easy (what could be easier than sitting around all weekend?), and hard (with no distractions, I have to face everything that’s going on between my ears).

 Fortunately, the sitting is broken up with periods of walking meditation, which I particularly enjoy. To me, walking meditation is more than just a break to get my circulation going and fend off drowsiness. I see it as a simple footbridge between sitting on the cushion and everything else, what we somewhat humorously call “post-meditation.” Walking is such a basic element of humanity that I figure if I can do that mindfully, there’s a smidgen of hope that maybe I can bring some of the calm, stillness and equanimity that I (sometimes) find on the cushion into the rest of my life.

Walking meditation also has a very strong connection to the path quality of practice, and life. Pema Chodron says, “The path ... is not prefabricated. It doesn’t already exist. The path that we’re talking about is the moment-by-moment evolution of our experience ... It comes into existence moment by moment and at the same time drops away behind us.” We can’t see where we’re going, because it doesn’t exist until we create it. We can only see where we’ve been. I find this incredibly hopeful, particularly as I reflect on my own life over the past several years and see the path I have created simply by the choices I’ve made and the steps I've taken. I look forward to the unfolding of that path with each step.

Photo courtesy http://www.flickr.com/photos/alicepopkorn/ / CC BY-ND 2.0

So, Dalai Lama—any last thoughts?

“What should one’s last thought be upon facing death?” was the question posed to the Dalai Lama by one of the 13,000 people in the audience at the Long Beach arena Saturday. His Holiness, somehow both regal and casual ensconced in his swaths of red and saffron robes in an impossibly enormous throne-like chair, thought for a few seconds and then proceeded to not answer the question.

Death is on my mind more than usual lately; two women I know have had their middle-aged husbands die instantly and unexpectedly from massive heart attacks within as many months. Each man left a wife, two young children and a community of close friends and acquaintances in shock at the sudden and seemingly random grasp of death.

No matter how hard I try to wrap my head around the fact that this is in fact completely normal, I’m just not buying it. Despite massive amounts of evidence to the contrary, my naive image of death as it is supposed to be is that one lives to a comfortable old age and then one day lies down to take a nap and never wakes up.

Even my cat didn’t die this way. So why should I still be so surprised when nobody else does?

More food for thought came in the form of Stan Goldberg’s piece, “The Hard Work of Dying” in the November 2009 Shambhala Sun. Goldberg describes hospice patients moving through the dying process, dealing with the difficult emotional work of simplifying their existence, forgiving, asking for forgiveness and letting go of dreams on their way to death.

The piece is concise yet extremely touching, sketching in brief, honest scenes both the successful and not so successful efforts of hospice patients stumbling through unknown territory. Yet it also played into my death fairy tale because they all know they are dying. Knowing is key, I tell myself, to proper preparation. In my death fairy tale I will know, too. But it will be Later.

I love how Pema Chodron puts it in When Things Fall Apart:“The one thing in life that we can really count on is incredibly remote for all of us. We don’t go so far as to say, ‘No way, I’m not going to die,’ because of course we know that we are. But it definitely will be later.”

But for my two friends’ husbands, Later became Now in literally a heartbeat. So then what?

Which brings me back to the Dalai Lama. While skirting the question of what our last thought should be, he reminded us of the importance of always coming back to the reality of impermanence. He advised us to be mindful of the many forms of impermanence we experience in life and even to meditate on it daily. This will give us familiarity with death, he said. Familiarity will reduce fear, and will make it easier. He ended by adding, “When the time comes for me, I hope I can deal with it well, but I don’t know.” A little ripple of nervous laughter floated through the crowd.

So.

Simplifying. Forgiving. Asking for forgiveness. Letting go. Can’t I just wait on these things until I’m actually dying? Oh right, I forgot—I already am.

Photo courtesy http://www.flickr.com/photos/musicphoto/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Zen and the Art of Starship Maintenance

My husband never met a science fiction movie he wasn’t willing to give the benefit of the doubt. Consequently I’ve seen all the Star Trek movies. I’m a bit of a Trekkie myself, and remember as a pre-teen watching reruns of the original series on my parents’ old black and white TV. Tribbles, the Gorn and Amok Time were part of my personal pop culture, and Mr. Spock was always my favorite.

Since some of the later movies were definite stinkers, I wasn’t holding my breath about the new J.J. Abrams incarnation. The previews made it look like they’d turned it into Starship Troopers, but on taking it in at our local megaplex I found the new Star Trek to be a smart, witty take on the ST mythology that offers plenty for dyed-in-the-wool Trekkies while creating a cracklingly fresh alternative.

As a Spock fan I was not disappointed. Vulcans have always had a monkish vibe (those robes—hello?) and I detected some very Zen-like themes in the storyline of the pointy-eared one. Here are my top three Lessons from Spock as gleaned from the new Star Trek:

We are now heading out of the neutral zone, or in other words, SPOILER ALERT.

1. Fear and Anger are your friends, so let’s sit down and get comfortable, shall we? Spock had the right idea with the Kobayashi Maru test. Who would you rather have as your Captain—someone who has never felt fear, or someone who is so intimately acquainted with it that it is No Big Deal? And when Spock tells his father he has anger that he cannot control towards the ones who killed his mother, what does Dad say? “Then do not try.” Vulcans have a bad rep for not having feelings, but their real philosophy is that you can’t control your feelings, but you can keep them from controlling you.
2. We are all homeless. When the Vulcan home planet implodes, Spock gets a visceral reminder of what is actually true for all of us, all the time. I recently heard an astronaut describing in an interview how he manages launch-pad jitters by focusing on only the next 10 seconds. But when you think about it, that’s all any of us really has. If we’re lucky. Our only real home is the present moment. Anything on top of that is gravy.
3. You’ve created your reality, now lie in it. Can you imagine Future Spock saying this: “Oh if only I left the launch pad a little sooner with the red matter, none of this would have happened. How could I be so stupid? I should have known those Romulans would find a way to blame me! Why did I even bother trying to help them?” No, neither can I. He’s flung back in time away from everything familiar, his home planet is now an Intergalactic Dispose-All and what does he say about the life he left behind? “That is not my destiny.” Talk about grace under pressure. The Dalai Lama himself couldn’t do any better.

I’ll be interested to see how the character evolves in the new timeline, but for now I’ll just say Live Long and Prosper, Spock. Live Long and Prosper.