Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

I enjoyed a lovely museum visit with my friend today.  We saw beautiful paintings, had a nice lunch outside among sculptures, then browsed the gift shop, finding amazing design kitchen items, books, scarves, cards and other fascinating items.  The fun was in our talking about them.  Our enthusiasm was matched by our determination to enjoy them in the moment and not covet them.  It was enough that they existed and we admired them.  I love that kind of talk.  Sharing our feelings and impressions, and leaving the museum feeling saturated with beauty.

This friend and I have such a good time talking.  Now I have the visit to remember and the images in my mind of gorgeous art and color and feeling.  What a good thing to stuff myself full of!

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

Yesterday our daughter, my husband and I walked the dogs around a lake.  We indulged in conversation about the wedding, pleased with how it went and how friendly everyone was.  This kind of speech builds the memories that will become the event over time.  We were happy just remembering such a joyous day.  It was sunny and warm, people were jogging and chatting and feeding the ducks.  The entire atmosphere fed our pleasure.  Speech that is not informational but expresses feelings is a treasure.

The day before I'd gone with a friend to see a delightful documentary, "Seymour, an Introduction", directed by Ethan Hawke.  The film brought such pleasure to both of us.  This is a film to honor a gentle man, a teacher, who's love for music transfers to everyone he meets.  This indeed is right speech:  to find the Buddha in the ordinary life of a man invisible to most.  His joy in teaching is evident in the movie, and the combination of exquisite music, wise observations and getting to know this stranger better is a delight.  The film inspires.  There are so many giving people in this world, affecting deeply those they touch, and it reminds us of this, and also that even we might be one of them.  It takes practice:  right effort.  If we try to tell ourselves we don't matter, this film dispells that idea.  We do matter, even our everyday ordinary actions, and we are influenced greatly by such actions by others.  The one teacher who helped us through school, the aunt who shone like a beacon in a dark family, the words of a writer that guided us when no one else was willing:  these are the gifts of life, and we should  be awake to their presence as well as our opportunity to inspire in our own small way.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

I read a book recently about police.  It is a mystery, but very well written:  "Whites" by Richard Price.  A line in it struck me about how we spend our lives reworking our first twenty years.  I think for a lot of us there is truth in this.  We continue to react in situations as we did when we were children, and we can't see the patterning.  Part of what therapy does is highlight these crucial incidents and feelings to make us aware of them so we can work with them, see if they are still appropriate, or even useful.

So I propose a question about right speech:  How did we speak and how were we spoken to in our first twenty years?  It might be very revealing.  I know I hid my feelings from my parents, because theirs were so dramatic and volatile that I felt my emotions drowned out in theirs.  I also know the humor in the family often ridiculed others and was hurtful.  We sometimes teased my mother, and when I got in my twenties I vowed never to be sarcastic about anyone like that again.  I decided to curb my nasty tongue.  Gossip bothered me, too.  Seeing my mother and her friends, I swore I'd never be that mean, but unconsciously I repeated that pattern until I began practicing Buddhism.  Then I took a long time to think through what was well intentioned, if I was talking with someone about a third party, and what was going to hurt.  I haven't got the formula entirely figured out, even at my advanced age, but I'm on alert.

Manners were prevalent in our era, and I never talked back to my parents or said I hated them or smart mouthed.  I'm glad I had that training, as my kids are careful with others that way as well.  We don't name call.

I could explore much more, but I throw it out to you.  Look back and see if there are threads tied to your ankles from way back when.  One snip might make you able to fly!

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

I had my little surgery yesterday, and experienced a level of pain afterward that I can't remember before.  I had a rough night, but am better.  The hardest thing is somehow to take off the bandage and look at the wound.  I quickly covered it back up after washing it.  And last night, as I was not sleeping, I thought of my mother and the incredible pain she must have had after her surgery for a brain tumor and then later after colon cancer surgery.  I don't remember her complaining.  The first time I was 14 and my brother 11, and we were told by my parents that it was very serious and she might not survive, but it just seemed surreal to me.  She looked horrible when she returned from the hospital on Christmas Eve, but I have no idea how much pain she was in.  The second surgery happened when I was a young mother, and again, I don't remember her complaining.  She protected me, as I protect my grown kids.  And in our family, whining was a cardinal sin.  I have no idea what the proper right speech is, then and now, for such situations.  I assume my mom told her sisters and friends how scared she was.  She didn't use me as a confidante.

And now I do the same.  I talk about fears with my husband, friends and therapist.  I whine, but discretely.  I find myself being extra cheerful and polite to the doctors and nurses.  I don't complain.  I want them to like me.  I can see my behavior clearly, but don't really know an alternative.  My mother did the same.  Now my father, when he was seriously ill during the later part of his life, got angry and demanded relief from his doctors.  They probably dreaded seeing him.  Did he receive better care or worse?  Does it matter?  He bulldozed his way through the world, and he could be both maddening and adorable.  My mother was the quiet stoic, and I wonder if that reflects gender roles.  I'm forcing myself to speak up more these days and be my own advocate.  And the surgery with this doctor is a result of me deciding I didn't want my dermatologist doing the surgery, and I gathered information from friends and asked for the referral.  I was brave.  And I feel it was the right decision.  I can't have surgery with someone because I don't want them to feel rejected.  As the Buddha says, be your own protector.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

Yesterday, my husband and I saw an art exhibit from Scotland.  There were gorgeous paintings by Boticelli, Monet, Degas, Vuillard, Rembrandt, Bonnard and others.  We did the audio tour, and so a voice was in our heads speaking rightly about the great beauty before us.  Specific details were focused on, rather than sweeping statements.  Sometimes biographical information was described.  The narrators cleverly did not attempt to sum up a work of art, but guided us gently to points they found interesting to themselves.

At lunch, we looked through the catalogue, and many of the prints could not capture the color and intensity at all.  It was disappointing but not surprising.  Describing an experience after the fact is difficult, and sometimes at the time not possible at all.  It feels like all the senses are assaulted at once, not just vision.  How the daubs of paint can convey so much emotion and complexity is a mystery and a miracle. 

Capturing experience in words is challenging.  Yet most people have the urge to share the intensity.  Forgiving ourselves for falling short is a start at showing good intention, no matter how unsatisfying the outcome.  Rather than being frustrated, we can be calm in the face of such encounters with great art, and allow the feelings to wash over us without labeling them.  Labeling diminishes.  It's the experience of absolute joy:  it can not be expressed properly or even shared.  But it's an act of love to try.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

My husband is very worried about having his tooth pulled today.  I'm listening, but not saying much, because there is nothing more to say and his anxiety is something so a part of him that I have no ability to soothe him.  But part of him thinks I do.  He wants to be rescued, when he's like this.  I'd love to if I'd ever in my life had any success with rescuing.  It's tempting to lecture, reassure, be logical, any number of useless things.  But then he gets angry with me, because he's so angry at himself and his neediness.  Instead, I respect that this is his issue, and he'll get through it in his own way.  His own way involves lots of suffering, but he knows what I would do, if it were me.  I'd attempt to separate the unnecessary suffering from the natural fear and talk myself down.  I'd deep breathe and reassure myself that it will soon be over and I can ask for pain medication.  He will maybe avail himself of these tools.  Or not.

I seem to be talking a lot about not talking.  Speech is about when to open your mouth, what comes out of it and when to keep it zipped.  This is the keeping it zipped kind of situation.  I'm hanging around physically until he leaves for the dentist; I'm available.  I'm willing to listen.  There are no wise words for him.  I'm wise to know that, after almost 41 years of marriage.  I'm the body in the room witnessing his suffering.  That's the best I can do.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

Today my teacher talked about sitting in silence.  He feels the world is on the cusp of another paradigm shift, and could either become an enlightened age or intensify in violence.  It's up to us to pray for peace and healing, and the best prayer is silence.  He didn't clarify, but I'm thinking prayers with words can go wrong:  they can become selfish, or label, or see people as bad or good.  But sitting in silence, looking inward, we begin to understand and accept ourselves, both our light and dark sides.  If we find the space and time, we begin to witness our thoughts, and see our concepts and beliefs as sometimes alienating, separating us from other beings.  Our compassion and love can be freed to grow and affect our behavior.

All our devices, the cell phones, TVs, Ipads and video games bombard us with overstimulation and simplification and distraction.  Our thinking becomes the product of other input, not our own reasoning process.  Silence allows us to listen to our inner voice, our instincts, and observe our minds and what flows through them. 

Yesterday, I was thinking that right speech requires honing the skill of right listening, but today I see it also is encouraged by right silence:  centering ourselves for reflection and contemplation.  Then we have our inner Jimney Cricket to guide us toward right living.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

Our study group went pretty well, especially after someone spoke up about the elephant in the room:  whether our teacher should be driving down each month.  We had an honest discussion of reservations each of us had and the alternatives like skype and speakerphone.  The important event was we were able to see her response, and that she is unable to see what is so with herself and the group.  We want what is best for her, but perhaps that will involve firm resolve to insist on safety and readjusting our group for changing needs and the aging we are all experiencing.

We had a powerful discussion as well about end of life decisions and what is the responsibility of the team of doctors, the family, and the patient.  It's awfully complicated, and finding the path to the least suffering is often by trial and error.  Each case is unique as well, and what seems like long odds for treatment sometimes works, just enough to obscure the picture.  Everyone's intentions are for the best, but being detached and objective is impossible, even for doctors.  They bring their own agenda and history to the table.  Sometimes you don't know until the last day of life if the choice was wise or mistaken.  There is so much mystery in life.

Anyway, I count this day as one in favor of right speech.  Right listening, maybe not so much.  Those are two separate things sometimes.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

Today may be a delicate day for right speech.  My Buddhist teacher has cognitive issues that make confidence in what is being heard and understood by her difficult to assess.  She has short term memory lapses, and though a person tells her again and again she forgets she's asked and been answered.  This weekend is the last meeting of our study group, so it is poignant and saddening.  We feel it is dangerous for her to be driving here, but understand how devastated she must feel about not being able to be that independent any longer.  We will miss her, but have been saying the long goodbye for the last several years, and many of us have other regular teachers, since she lives too far for regular meditation and she's ceased holding retreats.

I know she's in my heart and mind permanently, and she transformed my life forever.  She set me on the path.  She helped me study for and take my vows.  She woke me up to my patterns of behavior and my blind spots.  Her voice guides me.  I know what she would say in almost every situation.

She'll be coming to spend the night with me and do this last group tomorrow morning at my house.  I feel the air already heavy with import, and the huge responsibility I have hosting this meeting.  I will be guided by her behavior and the others.  But part of me is crying inside.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

As we have the priviledge of the retired, my husband and I are free to indulge ourselves in amazingly silly ways.  Last night, after we watched "Showboat" with Ava Gardner, Howard Keel and Kathryn Grayson, I wondered why they had not used Ava Gardner's voice in her two songs.  I'd read it somewhere and it puzzled me.  It turns out it IS her voice on the album, and my husband hunted up the two videos of her actual voice singing.  She was better!  Why they used the voice of Annette Warren is a huge mystery.  Gardner, real name Lucy Johnson, had a lovely voice with lots of expression and feeling.  She was from North Carolina, so she had the requisite southern accent as well.  Very strange indeed.

It's bothered me that in the old days in film they dubbed singing.  I believe that stopped after "West Side Story" and especially "My Fair Lady".  People were outraged that they cast Audrey Hepburn instead of Julie Andrews, and they gave the Oscar to Andrews for "Mary Poppins" to prove their point. 

On viewing "Showboat" before now, I've always assumed Gardner's acting and great beauty caused them to cast her despite not being able to sing.  Not true.  She was the complete package, and audiences of the time never were able to appreciate her talent.  She's definitely the best thing in the film, and her story is the one with power.  She makes everyone else's acting look hammy and false.  And it was brave to take on a controversial role in those days.  Lena Horne had been considered, but rejected, due to the racism of the era.  Soon enough the tide would change and ethnic and accurate racial actors would finally win the roles they knew so well.  And actors, singers or not, would voice their own songs.

Now that's what I call right speech.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

In my writing group I've been working on a memoir of my experience in Fiji.  I want to be truthful, but of course only know what a young woman in her early twenties would know.  I have to settle for being truthful about what I felt then, and reflect on how it seems now decades later.  I will never know the truth from others' points of view, or really how that time felt to them.  I'm hampered by the fact that my first husband is dead and has been for thirty years.  I can't check with him, or any of the people I knew there and then.  So the memoir becomes a feeling piece, illusive and forever fragmentary.  I could make the book fiction, but I'm more interested these days in the borders of fiction and non-fiction.  It seems more honest to be tackling my experience this way.  I'm aware that the more an event is related the further it gets from the bare facts.  Yet, the question is, does it inch closer to the truth of the experience as it leaves accurate details behind?

When I bring in a few pages of the draft to the group, they often ask for more details of my life, and react viserally to the drama of the events.  That may be a good thing in a reader, but it makes me uncomfortable.  I feel far removed from those times, and it seems as if they happened to another girl, not myself.  I was so different then, innocent and naive, and yet, and yet, she is still there, that girl in me, still stunned that she was treated badly at times, and left to her own devices too often.  I was strong, living abroad was a baptism by fire, and I learned and changed and grew.  I became myself, knowing what was important to me and what were my limitations.  I wouldn't change a thing.  But is any of this truth?  I have no idea.  My attempt is not to lie.  Knowing the truth is far more difficult.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

Sometimes I think the best right speechifying I do is when I write poetry.  Perhaps that is because it comes from the heart, not the head, and it's truth rests in imagry that connects with others' experiences.  The poems are personal, not meant to represent anyone else's point of view.  It's harder to get inside anyone else's mindstream and I am an observer only when I do describe another.  I know my limitations.  So if the poem is about my granddaughter or a bird or a flower, the subjectivity is obvious, not hidden.  I'm describing how all this impacts me.

When I read poetry I also take it personally.  Not is this poem great or important, but why it means so much to me.  Wordsworth's daffodils have stayed in my consciousness because of my own joy of nature and the miracle of spring.  Gerald Manley Hopkins' "Spring and Fall to a Young Child" tackles the childhood sense and puzzlement about mortality.  I found it expressed the inexpressible when I was twelve and my grandmother died and then my boyfriend.  Shakespeare's sonnets showed my how complicated love is, and how powerful, when I felt lost in my being in love and felt I didn't know what was going on.  Mary Oliver shows the importance of nature and animals and aging, all of which are central to my being.

When I wrote a blessing for my daughter's wedding recently, I wrote it as a poem, so it would be true to my heart and my own experience of the couple.  That way, I was getting as close to right speech as I was able.  Poems are the heart singing.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

I've just finished writing a flurry of emails about the contracting work being done on my brother's house.  Everybody is pushy and this morning they confused me utterly.  We're now backtracking before we write a check for completion of the work.  The logical choice at this point is to stop dead and wait for authorization from the insurance company, so that we can be sure we won't write a check and never get reimbursed.  I have a headache already.  My husband is trying to help, but he's also confusing me.  I am caught in the middle, as I am the heir.  And I'm facing a 2 1/2 hour dentist appointment this afternoon for a crown.  I am not in the mood for this.

Two phone calls interrupted this blog, and things are somewhat clarified, but it is a lesson in black and white not necessarily helping.  The emails themselves were too numerous, too quickly written, and obscured the process.  Right speech can go wrong in emails as fast as speech.  Luckily, all the parties had good intentions and no one was trying to pull the rug over anyone else.  However, now I'd be happy to snuggle up with a rug and cease communication for a bit, while I contemplate getting through the temporary crown process, which involves a medieval torture instrument meant to keep the tooth dry while the ruthless dentist drills me.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

I've got a friend who likes to vent to me.  She's not exactly practicing right speech, but I give her the benefit of the doubt.  She has a turmoil of emotions that spill out as anger, but she has few skills to examine her emotions or the causes and conditions.  I don't encourage her, but I listen.  Will she change?  Probably not, at our age, and she is well meaning and kind hearted.  But her venting has a pattern, and the same events and situations come up repeatedly, because she can't move beyond her reactivity.  Examining her own patterns is not something she has experience with, and she looks to others for guidance.  I avoid minding her mindstream by paraphasing what she has said, and also by sympathizing with her hurting.  I address that hurt, because then she feels seen.

Giving up trying to change people by "helping" is one of my achievements in the last few years.  People are pretty much going to be by now what they were all along, and I accept that the speech between us is not going to become transparent.  My gift of love is listening without judgment or fixing.  I either love them as they are, or I'm no good to be around them.  We're all human, all on our own individual paths, and all deserve love and respect.  That doesn't mean I don't try to be as transparent and genuine myself as I am able, but I no longer have "requirements" of my friends.  Now a situation could come up in which I'd say something, but only in relation to our friendship, not the rest of the other person's life.  I'd say how what the person said made me feel, and try to clarify my understanding of what they said, but no further.  I want to feel free to enjoy my friends, not analyze them.  And so far it's working pretty well.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

"The Hunting Ground" was very powerful and upsetting to my two friends and I.  These young women speaking out about their rape on campus was empowering for them, and hopefully there will be some changes in how rape is handled on campuses.  Right now it is a culture of blame the victim and protect the perpetrator, in order to keep rape statistics down at the campuses.  They don't protect and serve their students, they protect and serve the interest of football and alumni and fraternities.  Money does all the talking, and they shut their ears to the suffering of the women.  Right speech is calling attention to this horror, yet when women professors supported the women, they were denied tenure or fired.  Silencing seems to the the main objective of the college administrations.

I was aware and afraid when I was an undergraduate at Cal, Berkeley.  I knew better than to go to a fraternity party, or walk alone.  There was an escort service at night so we could get from the dorm to the library and back unharmed.  Yet, in my sophomore year, as I was living in a coop, I attended a coop party (coops were all male or all female in those days) and a boy pulled me in a nearby room and threw me on a bed.  Luckily, I didn't really drink and had only sipped a beer, so I fought him off and ran from the room.  I never went to a party on campus again.  Ever.  I'd trusted that there were no predators among my fellow students, and we were being fed the line that it was a stranger or crazed person sneaking on campus that was what we should fear.  Nobody spoke the truth.  It was so dark at many points on campus at night that I could not see my hand in front of my face, but I knew I'd be blamed if something happened to me.  So I stayed in a prison of the university's making.  Years later I marched with "Take Back the Night".  We were furious that we were not safe to go to a movie or take a walk and look at the stars or go to the library in the evening.  And now, many years after that, nothing has changed.

I hope this movie gets wide play and causes a conversation about colleges and their priorities.  I hope young women are warned they are in danger before they step on campus.  I hope the law changes and perpetrators are punished, not their victims.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

The doctor's speech yesterday was crystal clear, and I was given ample time and space to ask questions and understand the surgery.  He and the nurse were veritable models of right speech.  I am relieved to have a surgery date.  I am today trying to exercise right speech around my brother's house and the contractor, as well as the real estate person.  Lots of opportunities these days!

I'm going to visit my friend's mother and check on her.  She knows I'm checking up, but is amiable about it, and I enjoy visiting with her anyway. 

Tonight I'm going to see "The Hunting Ground", a documentary about rape on campus.  I'm going with two friends, and I know this will be a right speech experience, coming out of a long silence about this issue.  It's time for colleges to step up to the plate and protect their students.  I expect seeing it to be disturbing, but it's important to have this problem aired in public. 

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

Today's right speech challenge will be my consult with the dermatologist who hopefully will do my surgery.  I want to have the courage to ask questions, questions that might seem dumb or skeptical.  I have a powerful pleasing urge that renders me silent in front of authorities, and I also get teary these days, feeling sorry for myself when I should buck up.  The latter is the result of too many crises in a short amount of time, and the sense that I am on overwhelm.  So it's important I not sabotage myself, and then be haunted by questions I was afraid to ask.  That's my MO.

After all my years of practice, not knowing and uncertainty are still loaded for me.  This whole skin cancer thing brings up my fears and having had two friends who died of skin cancer compounds my anxiety.  I know I'm not alone.  Other friends have expressed similar feelings, and we all are feeling squeezed by the health demands of getting older and having this and that to attend to without long breaks, as in the past.  A doctor's visit triggers nagging worries and unreachable expectations about losing weight, getting off meds, exercising more, the whole nine yards.  We punish ourselves for the inevitable.

So it's a fine balance between taking care of oneself and paranoia, between reason and emotion, between listening and speaking up.  I'll try to do my best.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

Right speech doesn't guarantee right response.  Years ago I was visiting a friend in Europe and she asked if my husband, our daughter, and our daughter's friend could leave one day early so she could give our rooms to friends of hers coming.  I said we had no place to stay for the one night and were leaving by train and had reservations in other city, so she could move us all in together, and we'd leave early, but it was too much disruption for one night.  We did not know Italian and it was before cell phones and easy connections.  She became furious with us, even though she'd begged us to visit and insisted we stay with her, her husband and two kids.  She served special food to her friends when they arrived, and the same in the morning.  We had cereal. 

When we returned I attempted to email and phone, to clarify what had happened, but she never responded, and our contact ceased.  It's been years, but my being honest about the inconvenience and trouble, totally unexpected, was not what she wanted to hear.  Probably she was mad at me for some other reason, but she couldn't be honest with me, and it didn't dawn on me that staying a night would destroy our friendship.  Of course, I realized over time it was a friendship not worth preserving, as I didn't understand her "code" and she felt I didn't respect her enough to scramble around for some place to stay for the last night.  But it was one of the incidents when two people are speaking a different language from across the void.  I don't regret not budging, but I certainly was not aware of the cost of such a decision at the time.

I have occasionally thought of this incident and wondered if I'd hear from her, but it's been over a dozen years, and I no longer expect a call.  She wiped me from her slate of friends, which was her right, but I'd liked to have understood what went on and why.  I disappointed her in some major way, and I might have learned something about my behavior and speech if she'd engaged me, but without information, I'm in the dark.  Well, if something similar happened now, I would probably quickly leave and stay in a train station overnight rather than put myself through so much upset.  I learned people you think you know are unpredicable, and talking things out only works if both are willing.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

We're going to wine country today to take my cousin out to lunch and wine taste.  He's quite a talker, as am I, so my husband has requested he get a word in edgewise.  I've promised.  I know my right speech falls by the wayside when I am with certain people, and I'm a fast talker to boot.  My husband speaks slowly and pauses in the middle of every sentence, which maddens most people and results in their interrupting him.  I don't like overprotecting him, as it's his issue to address, but I will not be guilty of such insensitivity myself.  He also is more comfortable with monologue than dialogue, and that hurts his cause as well.  But he's asked me and I'm going to respect his wishes.

I think out loud, so I sometimes forget that listening has it's benefits as well.  I already know more or less what I think, but listening, I could LEARN something.  What a concept!  I grew up in a family of verbal bulldozers, and have had to tamp myself down ever since I realized how overwhelming I can be to others.  In my family of origin, it was my mother who lost out in verbal battles, as she wasn't as quick tongued and sharp as the rest of us.  When I grew up, I felt guilty for my participation in such argumentative "talks" and I've tried to curb myself ever since.  So I feel for my husband:  I wouldn't want to try to get a word in with my family either.  I'm going to behave.  And I'm bringing duct tape along for my mouth just in case.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

I have a friend who changes her mind a lot.  And I never learn.  She says she wants to meet for a movie and we iron out all the details and thirty minutes before I'm leaving, having been accommodating with my own preferred time, she changes the time, the day, or something.  I don't exactly know how to frame a question which is roughly, "Are you sure this is going to work for you, really, really sure, because I don't appreciate sudden changes at the last minute?"  So what I do is cowardly:  I make excuses the next couple of times she calls, because I don't trust the details.  I had a long term friend like this who has now deceased, and I finally got up the nerve to say, "I don't want to go to movies with you, as you're always late and we miss the beginning and it drives me nuts".  We continued to see each other, but no movies.  We also did not plan events that required a ticket, due to the late gene, and I usually picked her up from work for lunch and brought her back.  That way she was a captive to her own lunch break and couldn't really be too late getting back.  I loved her, but I respected her limits.  Timeliness was not a real possibility for her.

This friend has good reasons for canceling and changing.  But still, there is a pattern here.  I now know not to agree to something unless I really, really want to go and can call up alternate transportation.  Luckily, I'm almost always driving, so I can just go by myself.  I am perhaps a bit anal about joint plans.  My friend no doubt wakes up and sees what she fancies today, then switches plans on a whim, or not feeling tip top or a hunch.  There is no commitment.  She loves me, but everything in her world is negotiable.  She's loosey goosey.  I'm an organizer.  Despite our differences, we had fun when we do actually end up at the same place at the same time.  So I guess the talk can wait.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

I've just finished listening to Anam Thubten's live broadcast.  I was going to drive there but the time change and a late night got to me.  His words inspire and uphold me.  He was speaking this morning about our natural desire for existence and fear of death.  He described a universe where everything wishes to live, and to me that image is so uplifting.  Yes, we value our mortal lives.  When we don't, as in the case of my brother, it is a kind of perversion of life force.  Our spirit becomes so wounded we see ahead only suffering.  It was my brother's choice to die at the moment he did, but it was not who he was.  He was a life force, funny, interested in so many things, curious and loving.  I don't know how he traveled so far from himself, but I believe he was mentally wounded, and not his true nature, but his sickness of some sort, estranged him from himself and his Buddha nature.  I'm so sad about that, but not responsible.  He always had my love and knew it.  But he needed self love, and somehow he lost it.

I appreciate every moment here on earth, including the birds chattering outside right now, the challenges I face getting older, the inevitable death that could come swiftly or slowly.  I treasure right now.  And I'm treasuring it for my brother as well.  Because he's in my heart.

Last night we went to a concert with pianist Murray Perriera.  He was glorious, and the music sublime.  He played Bach, Hayden, Beethoven, Franck and Chopin.  It felt to me like he was expressing life force and the beauty of our existence in this universe.  His joy permeated the hall.  Ode to Life the concert might have been called.  I wish my brother could have heard it, as he loved music so much.  I heard it for him.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

I'm already thinking ahead to when our Buddhist study group meets for the last time.  Our teacher will explain her decision, and we will respond lovingly and tenderly, for we have been expecting this for some time.  We've all been worried about her driving here, and no one came up with a feasable alternative.  I'm thinking I want to write something down ahead and polish it a bit to give it to her, so that I include all my gratitude and appreciation and don't leave anything out.  Careful speech.  And even in the emails so far, we've all spoken of our sadness.  Things change.  But knowing so doesn't make things easier.

Magic words like "gratitude" help keep me focused on what is true and right.  This teacher transformed my life and the lives of everyone I've touched.  My behavior has altered and my mind as well.  My heart is wide open because of her guidance.  Another word that comes to mind is "blessing", because her coming into my life feels entirely like an act of grace.  And her ordinary humanity showed me the way to walk the path, fall off, get on again, and continue, no matter my mistakes and distractions.  Yes, I believe I will write an open letter to her.  So that she and all her family and friends will have my testimony now, not later.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

I received a message from my Buddhist study group yesterday.  Our teacher of many years is retiring, as she has health issues and can no longer make the trip.  We are attempting to meet one last time.  It's been on the horizon for some time, but still.  It's an ending.  A time for gratitude and expressing our deep love and concern for our teacher.  The email responses are generous, loving and helpful.  We've learned our right speech at her knee.  Some of us have new teachers and are keeping up our practice and doing retreats, and others will be seeking a new meditation center and new guidance.  I'm fortunate I found another teacher over three years ago, and he is close enough to drive to on Sundays.  I also have friends in that sangha now.  I feel for the study group members who will now have to search for someone to witness their practice.  But I have the utmost faith in their wisdom and practice.

This is one of those beyond words kind of moments.  So much memory is called up and emotion is high.  My love for this teacher is boundless.  But as we age, our needs and abilities change, and she has been our teacher in that as well.  She's ten years older than I am.  She's forged the path ahead for all of us.  Her courage and resilience is extraordinary.  She shines as an example of groundedness and compassion.  Her words will live beyond her and all of us, because we've used her as the model in our interactions in our own lives.  Bless her and her next steps in her path.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

I've spent a hunk of the morning talking to people about my brother's estate and house, and also trying to get clear information about treatment for my skin cancer.  I'd say the dermatologist's office was on a demand to know basis, as first I had to know from others what questions to ask, and then they were forthright, but not until I point blank asked a specific question.  Now I'm trying to be referred to a specialist, per my doctor friends' advice, and the whole process will take longer and that causes anxiety for me.  If I'd gotten on this two weeks ago - but I was swimming in wedding events.  Oh, well, I'm doing what I can when I can.  But I've learned a lesson about what information is withheld.  If I hadn't had doctor friends I'd not have understood my options and the ramifications. 

So I learn yet again that I must be my own advocate, or as the Buddha said, be my own protector.  I must fight for me.  I need to sort out the chaos of verbage and hear what was not said.  I need to seek second and third opinions.  At least my gut instinct felt that something was wrong.  That led me to ask people's opinions and seek answers.  But the doctor's office is a place often of doublespeak.  And that's not right.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

Well, things are getting back to normal after the rehearsal dinner, wedding and brunch.  I dropped the last two of my pals off at different airports yesterday.  My cousin is still here and we're doing something with him Saturday, but now is a reflecting, resting, and catching up time.  On the whole, there was a lot of right speech.  People were friendly, supportive and kind.  The vows were perfect and the toasts and other public pronouncements quite lovely. 

Now I am having things I witnessed in the rush surface, and I am able to notice and reflect.  The little moments that get lost in the rush, but now my mind resurrects.  The look on my granddaughters' faces when they got to hold the bride's bouquet.  The hug of an old friend and the love on the faces of the bride and groom.  The dance floor with all my friends swirling and goofing off.  My daughter's best friend's toast of her.  The flowers of hydrangea and tulips and roses.  It's a dilaphenous cloud of magic. 

Today I talked to the real estate agent selling my brother's house, the estate sale man and the lawyer's secretary.  Earth to Paula.  But it's all nicely buffered by the wedding events and my friends' support and my children's and grandchildren's happiness.  Ah.................