Laugh and Dance

Today's entry in Cheri Huber's Transform Your Life: A Year of Awareness Practice begins with a quote from Nietzsche and ends with an assignment:

Today, dance at least once and laugh with at least one truth.

Appropriate. Especially considering my last blog post. I read this and thought about the style of dancing I like to do and the particular song I'm going to dance to before I go to bed.

I live in Metro Detroit... we've covered that. I don't get out much. I've talked about that, too. When I do get out, I'm usually being dragged (well, sort of dragged...) to greek functions by my line sisters who worry that I need to get out of the house more often. One of our sister chapters in the area throws an annual event called the Pink Hustle. I enjoy that event. I recently attended the Spring Bash thrown by our area's chapter of the NPHC. Greek functions are great fun for me because I get to reconnect with friends I don't see often in my day to day work-to-home-to-work routine. They are also great fun because of the hustles (we interchange hustle with ballroom and stroll... but we're basically talking about line dancing). There are certain songs we typically stroll to... Some of my favorites?

• We old-school hustle to Stevie Wonder's My Eyes Don't Cry
• We ballroom to Jahiem's Just in Case
• We step to R. Kelly's Step in the Name of Love
• We cha cha to Mr. C's Cha Cha Slide
• We sweat to Cupid's Shuffle

So I said all that to say I'm doing the Cupid Shuffle before I go to bed tonight. I LOVE the Cupid Shuffle. Okay, that takes care of the dance part.

I think I've already had my good laugh for the day. I was listening to the Mitch Albom show on the way home from work and heard Ken Brown's latest production... it's a song he created/sampled called Monica's Song. You need real player to listen to this (and you need to be aware of a certain verbal exchange at a recent city council meeting to get it), but if you live in Metro Detroit and you are as tired of the mayoral scandal and city council's foot-dragging response as I am, listen to this... it will take the edge off.

Sitting with the Dying

I haven't really cried since my father died. I don't think those tears will ever come. It's not because I'm incapable of sadness. It's not because I don't feel impacted by his exit. I will forever miss my father. I will miss that I can never have another conversation with him. I will miss his presence both during the big moments (my wedding, if I ever have one) and the small moments (putting together a puzzle or playing a simple board game... things we liked to do together). But I'm not devastated by the reality of his death.

There are certain things that come up as you come to terms with the fact that you are sitting with a dying person. During the last week of my father's life, when I first realized that he wasn't going to make it, I wanted to be able to talk to him. He was getting weaker, he was on a ventilator, and conversation was not possible. I also wanted him to be comfortable. In the moments when he could speak, I wanted him to lie to me. When I went into his hospital room and asked "How are you feeling, Dad," I wanted him to say that he felt great, that he was getting better. But he didn't lie to me. He told me the truth. It was a truth I needed to hear because it helped me to understand how to be there... how to just be with him during the last days and the last moments of his life. It helped me to acknowledge that everything that needed to be said had been said, and that there was just one thing left for me to do.

There were moments when I wanted to run and escape... not physically, but mentally. I wanted to chant or listen to music or play a game on my iPod, or practice lovingkindness meditation. For a few moments, I turned to these distractions and they felt wrong, so I dropped them. There is nothing wrong with chanting, and there is nothing wrong with meditation. There is nothing wrong with playing music and there is nothing wrong with playing games. But some moments seem to call for your total presence, your undivided attention. When I was at the hospital, I learned to just be at the hospital. To be present with the sounds of the machines and the smells of illness... to be present with all of the emotions of the people around me--my mother, my brother, aunts, uncles, cousins and friends... to sit and hold my father's hand, to rub my mother's back.

There was a morning meeting in a small conference room. We were told by his doctor of many years that there was nothing left for the doctors to do. We were asked how we wanted to proceed. We decided to stop the medication, to remove the ventilator, to allow for a peaceful, comfortable exit. We were given time to bring the family together. We waited for everyone to be present who could, and we watched as nurses came to make him comfortable. I remember a moment when the waiting became unbearable. I remember feeling like a child in a car asking that question I hate to be asked when I'm driving.

"Are we there yet?"

And I realized and named what I was feeling... anxious, impatient. And somehow those feelings went away.

There is a verse from Advice on Dying that captured so clearly for me the final hour of my father's life:

May we generate a powerful mind of virtue
When the elements--earth, water, fire, and wind--
   dissolve in stages
And physical strength is lost, mouth and nose dry and
   pucker,
Warmth withdraws, breaths are gasped, and rattling
   sounds emerge.

When I read this verse the day after he died, it brought me right back to those final moments. And I think that the first line of the stanza applies whether we are the dying person or whether we are siting with the dying. If we want to be existential about it, I guess we can acknowledge that we are always dying and that one powerful way to meet that death in every moment is to generate a powerful mind of virtue. But what does that mean? I think it comes back to understanding the Dharma Seals and allowing an awareness of those truths to guide us breath by breath, moment by moment. I'll be back to talk more about this later.

Saying Goodbye

Three women that I've known for most of my life died this year, one just today. I knew them first as my mother's sorority sisters then later as my own. They supported each other in a cancer survivors group, and were always there for each other, lifting each other up through difficult times—remaining positive through it all. I've learned a lot from these women, mostly that on my worst day I really don't have anything to complain about.

When I have to say goodbye to a relative, a soror, a close family friend—the matter of life and death becomes palatable. I notice that as I sit with each passing, the immediacy of the loss is the jolt that reminds me to consider the impermanence of all things. Too often the awareness of impermanence  slips into the background. Any acknowledgment of it gets lost amidst the work day, the dirty dishes, my daughter's homework, the laundry. Days speed past in a whirlwind and I often do not consider that every day I am one day closer to death. It could be my own... It could be the passing of someone I love, someone I know. Every day, that final day approaches. And we never know how long the clock will tick until we have to say goodbye.

We know this. Intellectually, we know this. But we still put so many things off. We can always call tomorrow. We can fix our relationships later. We can hold grudges for as long as it feels good. We can put off doing the things that we know we could do every day. Some of those things might be as simple as saying thank you, spending time with the people we love, drinking enough water, getting exercise, getting enough rest, engaging in spiritual practice. What is it in human nature that causes us to be so nonchalant, so lazy about the things we should approach with vigilance?

I think it is the illusion that there is always more time.

It is so common to approch life with that thought in mind, but it's a gamble at best.

Look around. If you knew that the people in your life would not be here next week, next month, next year... would you do anything differently? If you knew that you would not be here next week, next month next year... would you do anything differently? Is there something unsaid that you would make the time to say? Is there something undone that you would make the time to do?

What are you waiting for?

What are we waiting for?

Always Ripe for Change

A couple of weeks ago I posted this inquiry. I wanted to know what others had to say about the nature of change and our ability to affect change in the world. I wanted someone to tell me how to be a Bodhisattva without feeling like a dictator or some egotistic authoritative person who "knows" what's best for people and tries to get them to live in line with that. Being that kind of person feels foriegn and strange to me for a lot of reasons. Mostly because I've tried it before and it didn't work.

I'm still trying to figure out how to carry the dharma into my daily life with consistency. I'm still trying to figure out how to bring my meditation off the cushion. Who am I to say what other people need to do when it is all I can do to stumble through my own attempts at right action? I've also been of the opinion that such attempts to consciously sway a person... to get them to do a certain thing or be a certain way... are often futile.

Wise people chimed in. They stated far better than I could the heart of my question and they gave me lots of food for thought.

Well, certainly trying to consciously sway a person to do something or be a certain way can be futile. We all have free will. That person has to be willing to come along for the ride. Here's an example... I want my brother to stop smoking. The reasons are obvious. I'm concerned for his health. I could spend a lot of time gathering books, materials, documentaries, studies, nicotine patches... I could ride him with the information like a man rides a horse. I could be dedicated. I could never let up. Would it make a difference? Tom made a point that spoke to this kind of effort. Tom says:

We change our entrenched habits when we are ripe for change. We overthrow our universe of thinking always for one reason [with respect to spirituality], because the ego-hold on us has lessened such that we've reached a tipping point where our old way of fitting in no longer feels right.

We can encourage and provide means such that people can exercise their muscles of compassion and wisdom. And then, we should stand back.

It's the "standing back" that I think we all have trouble with from time to time. Often, we don't see the strength and resolve in standing back. Especially if we have the activist's spirit. We think it is passive. We think we are giving up the fight. The opposite is really true. When you encourage. when you provide means... you are giving someone a hammer they can use to drive in (or pull out) that nail they are struggling with. You give them the tool, then you give them the space and the time to use it.

Nacho suggests that we (and everyone and everything) are always ripe for change because change is reality... it's not just part of reality:

[W]e always need to be one with change. Change (impermanence) is what constitutes us, what constitutes the world in every moment.

He, Zatoad, and Gareth also suggest in their own ways that while our more conscious efforts to affect change are one way to attemept to save the world, there are other ways.

I think Zatoad really clarified what I was thinking when I wrote the initial post when he said:

it really always comes down to the fact that we can only work on our own ignorance and development. Hopefully, if we are shining light on our own ignorance, we are also, slowly pulling a few other people along for the ride.

However clumsily, that's the point I was trying to make. What I seemed to forget was the point Gareth made:

I have seen people, including myself, change by merely being in the presence of a Dharma practioner.

Change is something that occurs with or without our help, I think the best thing we can do is take care of ourselves for now.

Nacho sort of "brings it home" when he says:

We work on our ignorance always as a result of being-in-the-world with others, in a symbiotic relationship.

The world is always ripe for change. The world is always responding to who we are and what we are doing. And so are people and everything else in the world. This is what Thich Nhat Hanh's word Interbeing is pointing to. Everything exists because of everything else. As subtle changes happen in one person, subtle changes happen everywhere. This may be hard to quantify. Everyone may not cause the global impact that Buddha, Ghandi, or Martin Luther King, Jr. did in the world... but everyone can have the same impact right where they live.

We do this by being steadfast dharma practitioners. Being steadfast dharma practitioners means that we do what is required moment to moment. That is th lesson of the Bodhicaryavatara (Guide to the Bodhisattva's Way of Life). Like Will says:

We find ourselves called upon to respond to the unending sufferings of the world, and it is good to heed this call in one way or another; yet at the same time without the delusion that we can ourselves bring about the end of these sufferings.

I think if we set aside our egos... the parts of ourselves that think we know everything... and put forth our best effort in the face of everything... we are doing our part.