Practicing with the Five S’s

Space/Splendor - Zoming out of the difficulty to notice space around it and anything pleasant to help balance the difficulty and not go into all-or-none, catastrophic thinking.

Sensations- Rather than trying to doctor the pain into a diagnosis (hard to abstain since it’s my profession), noting the sensations as ‘throbbing’ or ‘burning’ rather than ‘pain’.  It makes it less personal.

Self-compassion - Placing a hand on the hurt place and recognizing that others experience this, too. If I cannot feel the self-compassion, then inviting a figure of love to inspire it.

Not-self - Reflecting  on past inner and outer causes and conditions, present inner and outer causes and conditions contributing to the pain. Empty of a single cause or condition, and full of love.


There is a benevolence 
That softens a tangled mind
Agitated heart and tense body
Till they are all aligned 
To inhabit the moment 
With such intimacy and tenderness 
That a bright yellow center
Attracts bees to make honey
Make sweetness, make love
With all the hurt places-
Blood orange petals radiating
Metta in all directions
​Wishing for all to be free

For the first few days, samadhi is strong. It nurtures contentment on and off the cushion.

Then I wake up one morning with severe foot pain, unable to bear weight on the right foot. The perfect bubble bursts. Papanca proliferates in the mind. The heart is burdened by fear as the body tenses against unwelcome change.

It takes another few days to recognize etch a sketch potential in the breath, erasing tangles in the mind, sensing throbbing, aching in the foot and spaces in the body that are neutral, even pleasant. What is drawn on the mind screen, felt in the body and heart, all depend on my ways of looking.

I am not a ‘good’ practitioner when things go well, or a ‘bad’ one when things are difficult. 

Empty of a single cause or condition, and full of love.

The mantra continues to offer humility, softening blame and deepening compassion.

May these insights be shared with my patients and all beings, who are also subject to sickness, aging, and death.

Samadhi is not a perfect state, but mind, body and heart in alignment, receptive, sensitive, honest, always in communication with what’s needed now. If what’s needed is not apparent, then samadhi is waiting patiently and trusting if will come.

Kisagotami Bikkhuni and Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, I am listening…


****


KISAGOTAMI ~ SKINNY GOTAMI


A child dead.
And a mad search for a magic seed.


It's a story as old as dust.


Brave up, my sisters.


The day will come
when you run
from house 
to house.


People will meet you at the door, 
look you in the eye, 
and they won't let you in.


I'm sorry, they'll say.
But we can't help you.


Listen.


When everyone you love is gone, 
when everything you have 
has been taken away, 
you'll find the Path
waiting 
underneath 
every rock 
on the 
road.


These are the words of Kisagotami.




*****


Toward Peace  ~  Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer


Perhaps some part of me still believes
peace is a destination,
a place we arrive, ideally together.


I notice how shiny it is, this belief,
like a flower made of crystal,
beautiful, but lifeless,


devoid of the dust and scuff
that come from living a real day.
Meanwhile, there is this invitation


to grow into peace the way real flowers grow--
in the dirt. With blight and drought,
beetles and hail.


Meanwhile this invitation
to live in the tangle of fear and failure,
to be humbled by my own inner wars


and wonder how to find a living peace
right here, the peace that arrives
when we take just one step through the mess


toward compassion and notice
as our foot rises our heart also rises
and in that lifted moment


still scraping along in the dirt,
there is a peace so real we become light,
become the momentum that is the change.