Holy Beings All Around Us

In Mexico, there were men who cleaned the seaweed from the beach each morning. Beginning at dawn, they would sweep the beach, making clumps of seaweed, and then load the seaweed into wheelbarrows and walk the wheelbarrows down the beach, dump the seaweed, and come back for another load. All morning, they wheeled their wheelbarrows back and forth along the hot beach until the seaweed was cleared away. One of these men was a particularly striking looking gentleman, with a leathery tan, wizened eyes, and silver rimmed front teeth. He reminded me of Jack Palanz, in City Slickers – a tough guy you wouldn’t want to mess with. But when our eyes met, and I thanked him for his hard work, he gave me a dazzling smile, and then went quietly about his tasks.

I saw him every morning, and was struck by the patient poetry of how he carried out his task of making the beach beautiful for me and the other visitors. I began to see him as a holy being, a saint, attending to his job with diligence and dedication, and felt great gratitude to him for contributing to the beauty of Maya Tulum.

Once I realized this, I noticed other holy beings going about their tasks that looked small on the surface, but made such a difference in the quality of life at our resort: there was the smiling woman who came in after each yoga class to sweep the studio, align the blankets and blocks, and tidy up the mats; the men who were constantly raking and smoothing the sand along the paths; the woman who each day, cleaned my palapa and folded my towels into whimsical swans and birds; a smiling waiter named Rafael, who gave me a grand “Buenos Dias Senorita” every morning.

It is easy to make these observations on vacation; particularly on a spiritual retreat where we are focusing on the divinity of every human being. But what about at home? How would our world change if we viewed the sanitation workers who pick up our trash as buddhas, or the crossing guards who keep our children safe on the way to school? Or the metro-card sellers in the NY subways; or the person who bags the groceries? Just imagine what kind of changes would be put into place if we viewed the people we barely notice in our day as holy beings. Try it.

Happiness and Suffering

If the cause of seeing suffering in my world is karmic seeds ripening;
And the compassionate actions I take to alleviate that suffering are the cause of karmic seeds to see happiness;
Then the result of my right actions will be to see happiness in my world, and the end of all suffering.

Then that must mean that:

• Those I see suffering may not, from their own side, be suffering; but I see them suffering because I have the seeds to see that suffering and thus suffer.
• Those I see suffering might, from their own side, be pretending to suffer to give me an opportunity to practice compassion and thus plant seeds to not see them suffer.
• When I see happiness in my life, it must be the result of karmic seeds planted from compassionate actions I have taken to help others.

How can I be happy if I constantly hold in my heart the suffering in the world?

Is it by remembering that the suffering is my own projection because of seeds I once planted?

If I understand that the suffering I see necessarily comes from me, and thus may or may not actually be suffering from the side of those I see suffering (because they are either holy beings pretending to suffer to help me with my karma, or because the “reality” of their suffering is my projection), is my path then to practice the 6 perfections as though everyone in my world is a realized being?

The Last Supper

Tonight was the last night. We went to Zauma’s for a great dinner and some spirited dancing.

I have met some amazing people on this trip:

Joe, who just discovered the teachings and has dived into them with wonder and appreciation;

John, who found romance in Tulum (go John!!);

Tracy, who looked her fears of heights, darkness and the ocean in the eye and conquered them;

Dawn, full of “vroom” and funk, who plans to start trying to have a baby with her beloved husband (go Dawn!!);

Darren and Michelle (the Hawaiian yoga goddess) who are so full of love for each other that everyone around them is giddy with good vibrations;

Eva, my roommate, who heroically lives with various ailments but remains full of grace and positive energy.

Today, Cassie and Angelica put on a fantastic gymnastics exhibition on the beach. We gave them both perfect 10s.

There were also two wonderful Swiss women, Regulah and Salome. Salome had one of the best quotes of the week. After a particularly sweaty class, she said, “I sweated so many of my toxins out, that I must immediately have a cigarette to replenish them.”

Of course, Erin and Stacey were here, as well as Barry, who was on retreat last year as well. I also got to know Leslie, who takes classes at Lotus. I never really talked to her before, and I look forward to seeing more of her back in NJ. She is smart, funny, and brought a grounded sense of humor to the group. I will miss them all.

A Beautiful Sight

Today in meditation, I had the experience of rolling with the waves and wind. My body and the winds and waves were one, blanketing the planet from above and below. I saw the world as a ball of light, and all the beings on it as stars, burning brightly like the light of fireflies. There were no wars or starvation or hatred or extremism or brutality – just bright, shining lights, glowing along their trajectories.

The Gift of Giving

For the first time here, I had the most tumultuous sleep. I awoke many times. One of the times, the ocean was so loud and angry I felt it would devour me. The sound, which has felt soothing and loving all week, was unbearable. At the same time, I experienced my inner body wanting to escape my outer body. My skin felt like a straightjacket. I stretched against it, flexing my feet and reaching my hands, as if I could break out of my self. Panic rose up in me – the sound was all around, my flesh was imprisoning me. I remembered the story that Stacy told me last night of Draupidi, clutching her sari as her captors tried to unwrap it, and called out in my mind: Sri Krishna Govinda Hare Murare, Hey Natha Narayana Vasudeva. I breathed deeply; the sea was calm, my spirit was calm, and I fell back to sleep.

I have had a huge urge here to give money away. When someone expressed ambivalence about doing the sweat lodge because it was $50, I paid for it. I feel like I want to sponsor S.'s trip to Guatemala – she is such an amazing person, and all her work is for good causes. Among many other beautiful vocations, she has worked as a doula, and runs a camp for brain-injured people. I want her to be able to travel and help others, because I can only do that in my mind right now. And yet, is that beyond “what is needed?” Do I want her to think I am a good person? Do I have to be sure my motive is pure before I am generous? If you know that merit is the byproduct of your action, does it taint the motivation? Am I consciously collecting virtue?

As long as I can remember, I loved giving things to people. When I was a child, I loved making gifts for my family’s big Christmas celebration. In various years, I made patchwork pillows, paintings, dolls, jams and cakes for my cousins, parents, aunt and uncle, and grandparents. I took painstaking care of my choices, wanting the gift to perfectly suit the recipient. I searched out the perfect wrapping paper, wanting to make sure my gifts looked beautiful and unified. And I loved watching my relatives open them. This was all that mattered to me; I cared little about the gifts I got. In fact, I barely remember anything I received, and yet the memory of giving is very real. But was it about me, or was it about them? Is the fact that I even ask myself this question a sign that my motives were less than pure? Does it matter?

World Views

I’ve been having a recurring thought, dream or vision. I see inside my body, and the millions of organisms that make it work – starting with the gross: skin, muscle, tissue, bones, organs, etc., and then getting smaller and smaller, to the millions of cells that make up all of these organs and together make up my blood – each of these with a nucleus doing specific work to create the whole of what is me. And then I see myself in my life – my very small life that touches just an infinitesimal fraction of the population of the world – doing my daily work. And my vision gets broader and pulls away, seeing myself smaller and smaller, moving back from my life, my town, my state, my country, and then moving farther away from the earth itself, until I see the earth from space – a small ball of green, blue and white. And I am aware that on this planet, are trillions of people like myself, each with a nucleus, going about their lives. But they are invisible, from space, just like my individual cells are invisible to me. But together, they make up the whole of what we call “the world.”

From this vantage point, all that seemed and still seems so achingly important in the micro version of life seems irrelevant. Whether someone cuts me off when the light turns green; whether we put the addition on the house; whether my ex-husband brings our daughter back on time or agrees to my suggestion for a summer schedule; seems insignificant. We are all part of one organic whole. Before our lives began, and after they end, this “whole” will go on. Just as in my body, there were cells that battled the flu last month. Those cells have died, and new cells have taken their place, and my body goes on. It is interesting to look at the daily trials and tribulations of my life – of any life – from this perspective.

The ocean is full of beans this morning – crashing and foaming and frothing. It seems to have rained last night. Earlier in the evening, the wind was doing a whirling dervish kind of dance. I was reading in my room and at about 5PM, I realized that the electricity in our palapa wasn’t working. I assumed that the wind had affected all of Maya Tulum; when it go too dark to read, I dozed off and awoke in the dark just in time for dinner. I mentally patted myself on the back for packing a flashlight, and left for the dining hall. I was so surprised to see that other palapas had light, and that it was just my palapa that had none. Of course, the front desk was able to have someone fix it right away. But I laughed all night about how I was in the dark for so many hours, assuming we were all in this together. Could there be a metaphor here?

Hard Questions

I talked to Emily, one of Kelly’s teacher-trainees, yesterday about Hitler. I first met Emily on the van from Cancun, and was immediately impressed with her knowledge and gravitas. It is inspiring to see all these young women, many just in their 20s, already immersed in the teachings with their whole lives ahead of them to change the world. She suggested several possibilities for understanding the Holocaust. One was that Hitler, and the millions who died, were all bodhisatvas, teaching the world compassion and the evil of anti-semitism and racism. Another was that Hitler was our perception – the evil and hatred inside of him and those who worked for him and supported him could only exist because it exists inside those who perceived him. We talked about the fact that the lives of Jews all over the world is dramatically better now than it was before WW II, because of the enormous tragedy of that war. Also, the state of Israel was formed as a direct aftermath of WW II – something for which Jews had been striving for so long.

Well, it’s a tough one, no question.

Yesterday’s teaching was about the perfection of patience. In Kelly’s words:

The goal of a yogi is to cultivate bodhi chitta – bodhi meaning awakened; chitta meaning mind. The foundation of yoga is to awaken to the suffering of others. To do this, we must cultivate a compassionate mind. First, we must, ourselves, realize happiness. We must become happy because one drowning man can’t save another. But the motivation behind our effort to be happy must be to show others how to do the same. If the goal is purely selfish, it is not bodhi chitta.

It is said that the opposite of patience is anger; and the antidote to anger is patience. Anger often starts with a small complaint – for example, it’s too windy; or it’s too cold or hot; crowded or empty, etc. And before you know it, you’re “hating” the wind or the temperature or the person sitting too close to you. And sometimes you feel that if you could only change this or that, you would be happy. But your mind is your same mind, wherever you go, whatever you buy, no matter how many pounds you lose or gain. To purify the mind, we must cultivate patience as the basis of our thoughts: “Steep your mind in it like a tea bag in hot water.” We can never vanquish all of our external enemies – there will always be another one. But if we can vanquish our inner enemies – anger, jealousy, etc., the outer ones will go away because they are only reflections of our inner selves.

Kelly reminds me of Tinkerbell, in many ways. She is small, blond, and very beautiful. And inside her tiny, glamorous body is a fierce warrior – funny, blunt, unblinkingly honest, and sometimes profane. Her teachings are always filled with great, quotable nuggets that zip into your consciousness like arrows to a bulls-eye. For example, after yesterday’s teaching, she told us, “just lie down, take a spiritual valium.” Or the day before – “doing perfect asana poses won’t make you a being of light who will never die. Your bodies were designed to fail, so give up wanting to be a Yoga Journal poster-child.” Or, “if we had the power to instantly make ourselves happy in the present moment, we’d all be in a state of orgasm all the time.” (By this, she means state of bliss, by the way.) She is a great teacher. She is also very entertaining.

Back In Tulum

March 4, 2008

I woke early - 5:30 AM. The wind was raging outside and the ocean rumbled. I think we had a storm, or at least rain in the night, but I’m not sure.

Woke having a dream about Uncle Steve. We were all going out to a place like “The Supper Club,” and I was trying to get him to sing. I had a recording of “You Can’t Take That Away From Me,” and he sang along to it a few times. Of course, he was nervous about forgetting the words, and practiced scatting awhile. Then it was nearly time to go. He was going to wear a tux, and I was going to wear a tux, so I decided I should wear something different. I sewed pink ruffles and lace trim to my black stretchy Club Med dress. I tried it on (and somehow that was in a restaurant!), but the sewing made the dress really puffy so I changed back into my tux. Whenever I looked in the mirror, I looked just like my brother Joe. But no matter… Then, I was looking in my files for the words to “Can’t Take That Away from Me,” and couldn’t find them. I thought about whether I would have time to make copies from my fake book. All along, I kept reminding myself that I could just print out the words from my computer, but I kept forgetting that and looking for them anyway. Dad called and sang “Don’t Cry for Me Argentina” on the phone, and I woke up.

Hmm….

There are lovely people here. Most are women and in their late 20s – on the cusp of their adult lives. They are beautiful – strong and soft at the same time, their bodies smooth and firm, unblemished and un-stretched by childbirth, nursing, or the other rites of adult womanhood. They casually wear their bikinis, belly shirt, or low-rise yoga pants, seemingly at home in their bodies. I look at them and wonder if they appreciate the glory of their youth – I know I didn’t. Was my body ever as full of promise and perfection? I always struggled with it, feeling self-conscious about my not so flat belly and small breasts -- never realizing that it was at its peak. On Monday in class, Kelly said, the biggest cause of death is birth. We are all on our way to death from the moment we are born, and so the recourse we have is to become beings of light inside our earthly bodies, which are decaying all the time. If these girls harbor any negative feelings about themselves, you wouldn’t know it. Although each is a different shape and size, they all seem filled with light and the blue of the sky inside their perfect skin.

Angelica's mother is German and her father is Japanese. She is quite beautiful with almond eyes, an olive complexion, jet-black hair, and a wide, easy smile. She has no hard edges or angularity at all and carries herself with a dancer's posture. Her mother came to Minnesota from Germany, following an inner call to work with Native Americans and study macrobiotic nutrition. Her father was also in school, studying macrobiotics, and that is how they met. I find it fascinating that Angelica grew up in a home where eating consciously was taken for granted. She grew up without any processed foods – believing that eating food as close to its natural state and source is very important. She works in nutrition in NY. Yesterday morning, she told me that she had woken up from a dream about her mother, and missed her terribly. But then, she said, she was consoled by the fact that I was like her mother on this trip. And she hugged me, full of emotion.

It is a funny thing to be the senior person here – and I am. There are two men, John and Joe, both in their late 40s, but I am the eldest. Erin and Stacey are here – both from the Lotus Teacher Training. And Erin, when she saw me, exclaimed with joy, “I not only have my adopted sister here but my Jewish mama too!” Ironic, isn’t it; I came on this retreat, in part, to be in a place where I can be away from my roles as mother, producer, supervisor, manager, etc., and I have been named a surrogate mom and explainer of the teachings to many of the other participants. They think I am wise, but I think my knowledge is only the tip of the iceberg.

Yesterday’s dharma talk and class were about perfecting kindness. As Brooke explained it, we could never, in our human bodies, travel the world and eradicate pain and suffering in every human being. It is not possible. But we can eradicate it in our minds, and offer that perfection to everyone we meet, giving it to them and hoping that they realize it and offer it in their turn. She said that it is easy to be kind to those who are kind to us, but asked, “What is the attitude you hold towards people you may never meet? Or people who are not kind to you?” She asked us to try to remember that people who we perceive as not kind are usually full of pain and are suffering. And thus, more than anyone, they need our kindness. As Kelly said yesterday, you can only see in people what you yourself are or have been in the past. This is a very hard concept, especially when thinking about someone like Hitler. Sometimes I understand it, but sometimes I don’t. Still, it does make sense to me that reacting with anger and unkindness never helps a situation, and inevitably causes me suffering – either with a muscle spasm, headache, or irritable stomach. We must see each and every person as a holy, perfectly realized being. Because any imperfections we see in them are only reflections of ourselves.