​
I’m fascinated by the intersection of emptiness and metta.

This month I received a birthday gift that I did not want - a flare up of chronic SI joint and gluteal muscle pain. Still there was significant appreciation for emptiness teachings.

I wasn’t a victim of a single cause or condition. Nor was I an expert on perfect management in extinguishing the burning sensations of pain. Perceptions of pain were determined by my relationship to it. When it took center stage, the attention shrunk, and there wasn’t much space for anything else.

Seeing and sensing through the eyes of the Brahmaviharas, the areas of pain transformed into an island of discomfort in a sea of healing modalities and support. The attention stretched to include ice, Advil, supportive family members, joy for my partner getting back in shape, a compassionate physical therapist, concerned patients expressing empathy, an image in supine meditation posture of the heart space pumping a champagne like bubbly substance to the rest of the body that softened, soothed, and allowed experience to be as it was, even held in celebration.

What if time is empty - past, present future - all empty of a single cause or condition that made me? What if this pain is not mine, and belongs to a divine intelligence?

The universal song is composed of both high and low notes. When dukkha arises, may I remember that others experience this, too. When sukkha arises, may others experience this, too.

“When self, time, separation, and even suffering are seen as empty, a devotion to the endless commitment of love is felt without burden.” (Seeing that Frees, Pg 327)

As I sit in meditation, there is eagerness to interpret the dream, to make meaning of it.

SMD whispers, “Not yet my love. Stay close to yourself. Do you have your energy body? Emotional body?”

Trusting this voice, I become meek, cultivating patience and reverence for the process by systematically sensing earth, space, the flow of metta, fire for image.

The dream is strange. I see many fish enclosed in a large space by a fence or cage. At first they are all still, but then they are flapping around. One by one they pop out of the cage and become young children dancing a melancholy dance.

“May I be free,” one child sings.

I feel the child within inspired to voice her own desires.
“May I be seen and heard.”
“May I love and be loved.”

I think of all the undocumented immigrants, the students protesting in the US who are being deported.

The heart center becomes a gray, swirling storm, aching for the light of the Brahmaviharas to shine through.

*****

Hiking in the rain, I imagine the rain as Kwan Yin’s tears. The pitter-pattering sound against my raincoat becomes the sound of thousands of hearts beating fervently in prayer.

“May there be more sanctuaries of love than sanctuaries of hate.”

*****

“And what would that give you?” the voice asks. Is it the voice of SMD, Kwan Yin, Mother Earth? Does it matter?

Then I would trust in a universal benevolence, more powerful than greed, hatred, and delusion. I would trust citta as a meaningful extension of it.

*****

Down by the lake, its surface generously receives the raindrops, the tears, the prayers, swallows them whole into its murky beyonds.

The eye of a weak sun peaks through the gray above. Someone is watching, eternally watching.

And my bones know, there is more than this.

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.

Published in Pulse.

(This was first written a few months after my father died on Wednesday, August 30, 2022. It was submitted to a few publications and rejected each time. Perhaps I need to rest it here, invite it back into my own heart, and not seek anyone's approval but my own. May it offer some healing insights for others...)

It’s 1:45pm on an ordinary Wednesday in August.  A time when children returning home from summer day camps are cooling down with orange or berry flavored popsicles. A time when the sun is lazily strolling through a clear blue sky, too warm and weary to move any faster.

It’s a carefree time for most. But not for my brother.

Papa is sitting on the sofa slightly slumped over, his eighty-one-year-old spine yielding like an old, soft coat hanger to the weight of end-stage congestive heart failure, kidney disease and Parkinson’s. His signature salt and pepper beret hangs low over his forehead, covering his eyes.

After a few friends and relatives leave, my brother assumes he is just resting.

Until he moves closer to tap Papa on the shoulder, and Papa completely keels over like a marionette no longer guided by higher hands.

****
​
On Monday, two days before Papa dies, I receive a phone call from him.

“I miss you.”

His voice is magnetic, drawing me out of the embodied, grounded place I’m trying to reach. I hold the memories of this man’s significance in my life at bay; they are visitors I am not ready to confront. Right now, I’m at the gynecologist’s office waiting in an exam room to discuss treatment options for perimenopause. The appointment was rescheduled after I missed the last one visiting him in the hospital.

“I miss you too, Papa.” The response manages to push its way past the conglomerate rock of emotions stuck in my throat.

Seconds later, Dr. M rushes in like a whirlwind, eyes me on the phone, and backs out of the exam room. Clearly my phone call is more important than her services. I’m not sure I agree.

“Papa, I need to go. I’m at the gynecologist’s office. Call you later.”

Tenderness for my own wellbeing, my own healing process pulls me away from the call. Perimenopause is changing my inner landscape so much, that I feel like a foreigner inhabiting a strange body. But the force of guilt is equally strong. My nervous system is flooded with intense feelings, sacroiliac joints burning from prolonged sitting with Papa at the hospital for several hours and at my brother’s place now that he is home on Hospice.
​
Papa is still dying. After several hospitalizations for congestive heart failure, his heart is more susceptible to fatal arrythmias that can only be managed in an acute setting. As much as Papa wishes to prolong his life, quality of life outside of a hospital with loved ones is most important to him.

My thoughts are interrupted by a soft knock on the door. Dr. M reenters the exam room. I guess I’ve decided to stay. It seems like a logical decision, and my heart yearns for more guidance.

As I’m driving home from the appointment, I try to call Papa back. My sister-in-law answers. “He’s sleeping.”

“I’ll try to call him later.”

*****

I work on Tuesday and Wednesday to see a backlog of patients trying to catch up on two years of delayed medical care since the onset of COVID. They’re still afraid of the virus and all its variants, but cancer, complex pain, and confounding mental illnesses are strong competitors. My heart feels even more fragmented trying to meet everyone’s demands. Am I caring for anyone successfully?

The opportunity to call Papa later never comes. I am not there. I don’t get to say goodbye.

“Well, whose fault is that?”, my inner critic chastises. “You’re SO selfish, always putting your needs before others, even the man who raised you like his own daughter. You left your cousin brother alone to face his death. How could you?”

Another voice tiptoes into the conversation. This one feels like it’s coming from an older, wiser place. It might even be ancestral. “Dear One, it’s true you were not physically there in his last moments. You were consciously caring for so many depleted beings. Can you remember the times you were present to care for Papa in meaningful ways?”

I don’t see Papa again until my brother, sister-in-law, and I dress him in traditional white clothing at the funeral home for the final viewing before cremation. His skin is oddly smooth from the effects of funeral makeup, but it can’t hide the slight tension in his jaw, as if he is still objecting to this unsolicited outcome.

Memories that were once conveniently sequestered can no longer be held back. A shy eighteen-month-old girl arriving with her mother from India after her parents separated, trusting a strange man (her maternal uncle) at the airport to embrace her as one of his very own. Frequent trips to Yosemite and other national parks, weekend trips to Golden Gate Park and Ocean Breach in San Francisco where Papa instilled a deep reverence for the natural world and Gandhi’s principle of compassionate action in me. The time when he drove down from San Francisco to Los Angeles in my gap year between college and medical school, because I had contracted tonsillitis with a nasty secondary allergic reaction to the antibiotic, and I had begged him to come.

Flooded with guilt and grief, I question him silently. “Papa, am I worthy of this rite?”

His demeanor conveys neither judgment nor approval.

*****

The choices we make can restore or haunt us. Sometimes it’s not so black and white. I still see Papa’s face, hear his voice in the pleas of my dying patients.

“Help me!”.

Sometimes I recoil in fear and overwhelm, forgetting how to access the spirit of healing that extends beyond each exam room.

Sometimes I stay with compassionate courage and fierce tenderness, softening the boundaries between who is doctor and patient, who is parent and child.

Most days I’m learning to navigate the shifting landscape of change and loss without a clear road map, assuaging guilt with self-forgiveness, and caring for myself and others in significant ways.

Mindfulness teacher and author Jack Kornfield said, “If your compassion does not include yourself, it is incomplete.” As Papa once told me, even Gandhi needed a day of rest and silence.

​emptying the space 
of preconception 
new ways of looking
​are possible 


When things change, I get scared. Expending more energy on what class I can attend, what book I should read, or who I should talk to, I forget the invitation to just rest in uncertainty.

There is also tremendous compassion for how hard it is to feel windy thoughts jarring the mind, waves of painful emotions crashing against the shores of a tender heart.

A few days ago I was driving home from work. Heavy winds howled like banshees shaking the small electric car to the core of vulnerability. I thought I was going to die.

Arriving home in one physical piece, but many psycho-spiritual pieces, I tried releasing the visceral threat through words and tears in the arms of my loving, attentive partner.

I still felt broken.

I had no control over so many things: the body changing in perimenopause, friends and colleagues having meaningful plans that did not include me, miscommunication with my mom and teenager, patients and families who were not heeding my recommendations.

Yet, the following images arising in different meditations have offered some  comfort and clues along the way.


1.) An image of mysterious eyes crying colorful streaks of tears that veil the face. Allowing rivulets of difficult emotions to flow through the heart space can be beautiful and meaningful.

2.) An image of a woman placing hands on belly and heart, as if the body were a stringed instrument. Her hands feel the vibrations of sacred music from within, her fingers strumming along to create/discover more.

3.) An image of wind and waves threatening to break a protective structure shaped like a rib cage encasing a multifaceted jeweled heart. Sensations of fear and doubt arising as the jeweled heart smashes against its protective walls. As I grant autonomy to the heart, reverence and trust arise in the process, as well as wisdom and courage to love and be loved.

4.) An image of a mind cluttered with preconceived ideas of past experience. I wonder what it might be like to perceive experience with humility, soft and elastic edges, with the enthusiasm and wonder of a child trusting in benevolence. New ways of looking are possible.


****
​

When things change, I get scared. Sometimes I even want to hold onto this writing, these images…as if they are a talisman to protect me from uncertainty. 

Then I remember the true nature of trust. As self, other, and world change, so will words and images. The deepest letting go is letting go of it all, trusting the next words, the next image, the next stepping stone to appear when it feels impossible to cross the floods. 

​On a walk at Calaveras Big Trees National Park, the park ranger paused to pay homage to two giant sequoias that shared the same trunk. The trunks were originally separate, and fused together after a fire for mutual benefit and survival.

I thought of my mother and daughter, how the umbilical connection was severed between us at birth, how the sacral, sacred burning in my body was a sign.

I reflected on all the beings I have pushed away on this camping trip and beyond, the yearning to share the same base, something tender beyond ideas of a separate self.

In meditation, the image of the conjoined sequoias arose, inspiring metta for my teachers, for me, for my mother and daughter, for all the beings at camp, and beyond. It wasn’t my body-heart-mind responsible for such vivid and vast imagination, but tapping into a larger, loving life force inherent in all things.

Listening to the bell resound at the end of the sit, I was clinging- to the bell, the sequoias, the feeling, fearful that I would walk back into a black and white world where beings scurried frantically around like mice to make meaning.

I will continue to disagree with others and feel the pain of separation. I will also persevere in tenderness, beauty, and Soulmaking.

It’s what I was born to ‘do’, and who i already am.

(Listen to audio version here)

(If you would like to listen to the audio version of this talk, click on the link above.)
​
​The picture changes. Have you noticed this? People, places, things I’ve loved and wanted to hold on to are no longer the same. Family pictures that we took when my daughter was a baby are different now. She’s no longer a cute little cherub, but a tall, lanky teenager complete with acne and attitude.

The picture of who I wanted to be as a mother was so radically different than who I actually was. Instead of having my shit together and nursing my daughter lovingly, I looked like I hadn’t slept for days, felt irritable all the time, blamed anyone and anything in my way (especially myself), and couldn’t breastfeed beyond about 6 weeks.

For those of you who have ever been first time parents, you know it’s challenging. Even if you haven’t been a parent, anything you take on that is new and unfamiliar can be difficult: adopting a pet, starting a new job or school, caring for an aging family member, losing a job, moving to a new place, a new medical or psychological diagnosis in you or a loved one, and so on.

But stress, discomfort, dis-ease, is not just about meeting moments of difficulty in life. We all face challenges. What makes certain ones more stressful than others? 

2600 years ago, the Buddha had a word for stress. In Pali, the language spoken by the Buddha in India at the time, the word is dukkha. Just living this human life, we know that pain is inevitable.  But the added stress is optional. There’s a saying that illustrates this point well: pain x resistance = stress. If pain is inevitable, then what adds to the stress?

It’s our resistance to what’s happening moment to moment. The desire to hold on to the way my body used to be in less discomfort and able to do certain yoga poses, the aversion to burning, searing, aching, throbbing sensations in my left gluteal muscles, sacroiliac joint and right shoulder, the delusion that none of this should be happening, that I should be able to fix it, that this experience of pain is unique to Moi and no one else has ever felt this way.

What are you currently holding on to in your life? What are you pushing away? How are you daydreaming or misunderstanding a current situation? It may help to place a hand on your heart or a part of the body that is hurting, breathing into any discomfort with as much tenderness and compassion as you can muster. If that feels awkward, then imagine a comforting presence here with you now, breathing with you, understanding you, loving you just as you are. 

With our body’s, our circumstances, the people and things in our lives ‘forever’ rotating through like a slideshow, what can we come to rely on that is real, that will provide some measure of robust comfort when the picture is always changing? How can mindful awareness frame the experience in curiosity, kindness, and remain intimately connected regardless of whether we like, dislike, or believe what we are seeing?

There’s a song that I love from high school called ‘Pictures of You’ by an 80’s band called The Cure. The lyrics start out:

I've been looking so long at these pictures of you
That I almost believe that they're real
I've been living so long with my pictures of you
That I almost believe that the pictures
Are all I can feel
 
I realize now that expectations I had of myself as a new mother, as a person with this current body, even of my daughter as they are now, are all rooted in past or future stories of what could have been, what should have been.

This moment, right here, right now can be so exquisite, unburdened by past blame or future worry. For me, The Cure for stress is to identify more with the picture frame, and not the changing picture. Easier said than done, right? It’s hard to believe this when there are constant messages and advertising of the perfect picture, the perfect body, the perfect life on Facebook, Instagram, the media and beyond.

Mindfulness practice trains us to notice when we are lost in a story that isn’t true, when emotions feel like weather systems that will last forever and are actually changing all the time, when sensations define who we are and don’t need to be taken so personally. 

Learning to identify more with the picture frame, the frame of mindful loving awareness rather than the picture of changing circumstances takes time. If you are fairly new to mindfulness practice, you may uncover thought patterns and old habits you haven’t seen before. Things can feel worse before they feel better.

Know that you aren’t crazy or doing anything wrong. This is completely normal. In firefighting, the term backdraft is used to describe the sudden introduction of air into a fire that has depleted most of the available oxygen in a room or building. Similarly, when you bring attention to patterns of desire, aversion, and delusion, they can initially feel more intense.

This is when it’s helpful to practice with the support of others- a trusted teacher or therapists, wise, loving spiritual community. I’ve also found it useful to bring a spirit of creativity, adventure, and play to these practices. Like learning to cook a dish, play an instrument, grasp a new language, ride a bike, or train yourself in any unfamiliar skill, it can feel so cumbersome if approached with rigidity or expectations of immediate results. Yuck! Who wants to do that?

And, it takes a certain amount of gentle discipline, curiosity, kindness, patience, trust, determination, care, compassion, joy, beauty, resilience, and forgivingness to keep practicing, at least in my recipe book. Your healing journey may need similar or different ingredients. You won’t know till you try, keep showing up, adding a little more of this, taking out a little bit of that.

After 15 years of practice, I still identify with the picture, and sometimes forget about the picture frame. What’s changing is the capacity of this heart-mind to notice sooner, rather than later what’s needed to frame every experience in some aspect of love. It doesn’t matter how long it takes me. What matters most is my willingness to try. I’d like to share a poem that I think speaks to this "Cure for It All" by Julia Fehrenbacher.
 
This life isn’t what I expected. This practice isn’t what I expected. And it’s inspired such a radical honesty in me to try and see things as they are. Nothing more. Nothing less.  Anything else just doesn’t make sense.