A Simple Kind of Life

The original title for this post was "Community Growth." I intended to write about two very special encounters from the past week.

The first involved a Twin Oaks community garden visit with my housemate and gardening-extraordinaire, Mia. Over the last years she has reserved a plot, which this year she has generously offered to be our house-plot. We arrived upon the garden after a leisurely one-mile walk from Columbia Heights--her hands sticky from a street-bought mango and mine from vegan soft-serve. Our sole task was to water the plot and as expected, simple tasks are never so.

In total we spent a very pleasant two hours at the garden with our new little friends. Mia and I had run into two young people with their mother whom her supervisors taught in a gardening class. Christian and I became quick friends, most likely because he stubbornly tried to ride Mia's bike, even though his seven year old legs were not long enough to cycle. Most of our two-hour visit consisted of me steadying him, and eventually, pushing him on the bike along the garden; fetching water from across the street and losing the hose fight (in which I never had a hose...); and finishing our time together with a piggy-back ride. Curiously, he claimed never to have had one before so I was pleased to virtually slop around the garden with a small person attached to me.

As much fun as I had with both Mia and Christian, I made another observation. In our final minutes, harvesting our plot's kale and turnips, I felt an enduring peace. Gardening is remarkable relationship, no doubt, but most of all, I was awed by the gardeners. During our visit I saw a rare image in my life: an African woman in traditional clothing with her little woman, a Latino woman with her two little ones (including Christian), and a professionally dressed white woman, each sharing and using the same space. I thought to myself, "I've seen my Beloved Community."

Yesterday I was walking through Adams Morgan to Mount Pleasant from work. In "professional" clothes, I am so uncomfortable that I usually prefer to get out of them as soon as possible, but I found myself on foot toward home once I was passed by two completely packed buses. After all, it was my mind, not my feet, which is out of sorts in a collared shirt and fitting pants. Along the way, at 18th Street, I met Ed Ross.

Ed was selling Street Sense, DC's only homeless/poor person's paper, which I told him, "I never miss." I rarely carry cash but somehow I always have a single dollar when I come across a Street Sense vendor. Ed and I talked for about a half-hour. I learned a great deal about him, including his early years, life in the military, and these days, just an all-around active and good guy. He had one amazing story about his invitation to the White House by former President George Bush himself. The President learned about an experimental program Ed founded called the "Homeless Challenge" that allowed well-off college students to become homeless for a few days in DC. The President called Mayor Fenty, Mayor Fenty called Street Sense, Street Sense called Ed. Most exceptional about Ed was that he turned the invitation to the White House down. Better yet, he essentially put former President Bush in his place by way of honesty. After reminding the President of government's eventual response to Hurricane Katrina he asked why the President was unable to house the thousands of homeless or displaced DC-residents in his own backyard. Promptly a President's aide got on the line reporting that the President had an "emergency" leading to his abrupt departure--Ed said, "Yes. He had an emergency--from the fire that I lit beneath his ass." Mind you, Ed was a very polite fellow, but he also possessed a talent for telling something by its true name. There, I knew that I had found a kindred spirit!

I hope to run into Ed in the future. He spends most of his weekends helping children, selling Street Sense, and offering his company to two older women who love spending time. If you are in Adams Morgan, DC, during the weekends, look for a "Street Sense" vest along 18th & Columbia Rd. You may see a jovial guy named Ed Ross.

I began my full schedule this week (minus the holiday) as a 20 hour a week-legal researcher, and 24-hour a week-legal NGO intern, and 4-hour a week-externship student. I dress-up three days a week; claim my very own cubicle for one job; and ride the elevator to the 12th floor for the other. I am a bona-fide "suit." Yet, I discovered just how challenging it was to practice the dharma under such demands. After four days full of a general routine, and commuting, and reading reports, and reading statutes, and meetings, I humbly confess that enlightenment seems much farther away. Not to mention one's life outside of work, like weight-lifting, phone-calling, and reading (I began and finished "The Morality of Beautiful Girls" by Alexander McCall Smith, the third or fourth book in the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series).

I reflected on the week with my sangha-friend, Gretchen, over the phone. I have recently committed to join the "Buddhist-teacher track," with which I was sharing to Gretchen. We observed that every Buddhist teacher we know are either self-employed as full-time healers/meditation teachers or enjoy flexible work-lives as professors. We concluded, without intending to diminish these jobs, that sanghas would benefit from teachers with more diverse professional backgrounds (among other ways). Lawyers, organizers, laborers, salespeople, accountants, cooks, and others must become teachers because these are the conditions under which we practice.

"Teachers" must reflect the community of which we are a part in the Beloved Community. We all live simple lives in a richly-complicated world. Lives that entail relationships, trust, and change. I ask myself, "What will I harvest today?"

(He)art of Healing

"The Buddha mentioned a few of these more satisfying forms of happiness. One is the happy, secure feeling you get from possessing wealth earned through honest, hard work...Another especially gratifying form of happiness comes from reflecting that one is completely free of debt to anyone. (A II (Fours) VII:2)

Most of us, even the most discerning, view these things as the essence of a good life. Why did the Buddha consider them part of the lowest form of happiness? Because they depend on conditions being right. Though less fleeting than the transient pleasures of sensual indulgence, and less potentially destructive to long-term happiness, they are unstable. The more we trust them, seek them, and try to hang on to them, the more we suffer."

I read this passage from Eight Mindful Steps to Happiness: Walking the Buddha's Path by Bhante Henepola Gunaratana this week, a little over a week after I wrote the previous entry, "As I Lie." The poem may appear to be about change, however, as I wrote it, another type of feeling led my hand, although I was unable to identify it at the time.

This passage arrived at an ideal moment so I may connect the poem's story to feelings I held for a couple months. I realized that I depend on favorable conditions to inspire joy. Most of the time I am content--my neutral disposition is positive--interestingly, though, my contentness is highly dependent on "how things are." Over the years, it has grown stronger, as to be less delicate to the whims that grasp our everyday lives. I can usually maintain my contentness through a bad day or even a few bad weeks. On the other hand, it is weaker under significant pressure, usually displacing me into "a funk" or "a strange mood." This strange mood, I realize, is unhappiness. It is more like dissatisfaction. An irritant that life has not gone as planned or is bringing upon me bad luck. "As I Life" contained several double meanings but unbeknownst to myself at the time, I was revealing to myself my "happiness-lie." Beyond this, I was saying, I know that there is a deeper--truer--happiness that is near that I am yet to locate within myself. Perhaps the poem was a signal to keep digging. As I am learning to turn my upside-view of change to full, proper view, I can see true happiness as well.

These remaining lessons of Right Understanding have led me to a "healing commitment." Bhante Henepola Gunaratana says that enlightenment is the highest source of happiness, which we reach once we let go of the "lower forms of happiness," while at the same time assuring us that the Buddha suggested that we "maximize" happiness at whichever form. I am finally ready to let go of my happiness on favorable conditions. This form of happiness, above any other kind, has caused me the most difficulty (in my life) especially in romantic love. I envision my path away from favorable-condition happiness to be the way of healing.

Negative energy--not change--has haunted me. Buddhism and psychic healing have clarified the wisdom of karma. The negative energy within my aura or "psychic imprints" which I carry is like energy scars caused by my own actions as well as others. Remarkably, we carry these scars for long periods of time, even across lifetimes. In this lifetime, I have committed to a good-life by holding the intention to create and transform energy into good-karma, guided by Buddhist and other wise teachings. I also have traumatic psychic scarring from past lives that need healing. To do this, I have come across the gift of Reiki.

Many of my friends have witnessed my excitement these couple weeks over Reiki. My best explanation is that reiki also appeared in my life at the right time, connecting aspects of my worldview, and providing opportunities for me to share my deepest intentions with others. I am not prepared to say much at this time other than reiki is a Japanese healing art meaning "universal life force." Reiki practitioners are attuned to a benevolent energy vibration through which the energy flows into a recipient by touch. The practice itself is astoundingly simple: a "facilitator" holds his or her hands onto a part of the body letting the energy flow. The effect is that the universal energy channeled from the 8th chakra through a recipient's 7th chakra restores the recipient's natural energy balance. I have shared with friends that this practice is spiritually and aesthetically beautiful. Just marvelous. I am honored to have practiced on four people, including myself, and each time, I see the awe-like nature of energy and essentially, nature itself.

It was also important for me to write down the positive effects reiki has had beyond my psychic healing. (Also, as I have written before, I have received psychic healing through another person, which is distinct from reiki, although equally remarkable, because a healer works directly with a person's energy rather than serving as a facilitator.)

Positive Reiki Effects:
1. Reiki embodies healing touch as well as a healing outlook. The Gassho prayer accompanies the energy-practice, emphasizing five compassionate principles. The Gassho prayer, particularly its line, "don't worry," has calmed my nerves. I am a worrier. Often, I cannot distinguish worry from my thoughts, so I have felt lighter by not worrying as much, if at all.

2. "Touch" on myself has re-united me with my physical self. I feel more aligned with my body when I am physically active, which means most often, I feel detached from it. Holding and touching myself is healing in this way. I have realized the strength and elegance of my own hands--a quality that I have not noticed before. Similarly, I am more inclined to touch other people who I can tell are like me. Offering even an ordinary touch is a significant dana-gesture.

3. Reiki has de-mystified energy to me. As a long-believer of energy, my belief was based on a lot of faith and a few encounters. Today, I literally feel energy all of the time. In fact, energy is usually escaping my left foot (in a prickly-sensation) even when I am not practicing reiki. Since beginning reiki, I am also having vivid dreams which I remember (related to my 7th chakra opening). The more energy manifests the better my understanding of it.

4. Finally, reiki has brought intimacy back into my life. Because I am less fearful of touch, and I am opening my heart as a facilitator (sometimes, facilitator-recipient) I feel closer to people, especially loved ones. I have reigned in my intimacy because it was usually the source of unhappiness. (I have remained single and celibate for almost two years.) I can trust myself with intimacy nowadays and that is very nice.

I close with a metta-intention: May you find healing in whichever positive form. May you find true happiness toward liberation. May you realize love to nurture you along your path.

As I Lie

When I woke up last month,
I felt low, so,
I returned to sleep,
With hope that the next day,
I should find myself.

When I woke up last week,
I noticed that,
I left my confidence behind,
As I faced a long day ahead,
I remind myself to bring it with me,
Tomorrow.

When I awoke this morning,
I was less certain,
Today would be better than last month,
Or last week, so,
I simply smiled as I arose,
This time,
Not wishing for anything to change.

The Legacy of Teddy

I'd like to take a moment to recognize my closest and oldest confidant, Teddy. Most everyone reading has heard of, or has been frightened by, my 23 soon-to-be 24 year old companion. He sleeps with me every night, travels with me wherever I go, and in my view, embodies the best of experience.

Sometimes, I say that how a person reacts to Teddy tells me a lot about who they are. Some folks look onto Teddy with nostalgia, compassion, or disgust but more often a combination of feelings. Ultimately, Teddy evokes what you see in yourself over time.

I don't see anything wrong with Teddy. I only see comfort and familiarity. As some friends have said, "he's been loved." Indeed he has in different ways. For a long time I loved Teddy without being able to care for Teddy. Teddy enjoys a peaceful life these days as I enjoy more peace.

Teddy's actually looking better than he's ever been. Go ahead, Teddy!

This I Used To Believe

One of my favorite radio programs, This American Life, borrowed this week's theme from another great radio project, NPR's revived "This I Believe" essay series (originally hosted in the 1950s by acclaimed journalist, Edward R. Murrow). "This I Believe" engages people to write, share, and discuss core values that guide their daily lives (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4538138). Like This American Life, "This I Believe" is so interesting because it simply allows people to speak. Our own words are fascinating in a way that is unique to radio and media, more generally.

This American Life's theme twist was "This I Used To Believe," featuring four stories about lost, abandoned, and disposed beliefs. I was wrapped up--I loved it. So much so that I wanted to write my own:

I used to believe in impossibility.

I used to believe that certain realities were so unlikely, so remote, so strange that they could not be. I was more convinced about inevitability of certain realities: I will always feel this way about this. This is just who I am. I will always know this to be part of my life. I also believed this about certain aspects of the world: People are fundamentally this way. Religion and politics are in perpetual conflict. Some people are so invested in their beliefs that they will never change. Since, I've learned better.

Throughout my early life I was an aspiritual person. God had a benign presence at home. Both my parents were God-believing but neither were religiously observant. From time to time my mom remarked about God being within me or God being Love. I expected my father to pray for strength and courage during difficult moments or before sports events. My few church visits on major Christian holidays felt accidental. My family had good values even though we appeared "secular."

High school was a particularly explorative time. Over four years I became increasingly resentful of suburbia's pretensions. I sought to form my own personality in a place devoid of one itself. It was no surprise, then, I defined myself by determining who I was not. In 9th grade, I was a passionate atheist resisting God-fearing Christianity. After all, I was a 14. I didn't fear much, even the jaw-dropping expressions to my dry, sardonic (usually bombastic) responses to prostelyzation. One woman, in particular, put me into her and God's attention. She reasoned with me almost everyday during the school-year arguing for God's logical existence. I always had a clever reply--"when speaking to God, exactly which direction should I look? (Looking up.) A little more to the right? To the left?" My counterpart always laughed. Really hard. It's possible that my flippant replies were funny but these days I'm convinced that comfort in her saved-soul peppered my jokes to make them much funnier.

During my remaining three high-school years I became less defiant as I grew into my own. I continued to struggle with faith when secretly dating my first girlfriend who was a Fellowship of Christian Athletes leader. My areligious parents revealed to me their different beliefs in chance encounters. I earned Student of the Year awards for Philosophy and Comparative Religion my senior year. And by the time I entered college I declared myself a secular humanist.

Five years later marks a true evolution. I became more curious about my mom's intuitive feelings about energy and reincarnation, and I began to seek out explanations. T'ai Chi meditation came next, then, I was able to learn about Christianity, Taoism, Confucianism, Shintoism, and Buddhism in history and theology courses. Upon graduation I had a coherent set of values, still without a religion or spirituality to call my own. Today, I consider myself a deeply spiritual person, possessing "many faiths," as a Buddhist practitioner.

I had to find my own way to spirituality and eventually spirituality found me. I'm no longer naive enough to believe that I will always be this way or that it is necessary for me to be my true self. Interestingly, five years ago, I may have been offended were anyone to suggest that I would become who I am. At last, I may "lose my religion" in another five years. I don't know. A reminder that life is a humbling experience. In the same way my outlook has changed. I can be anything. More accurately, I am everything. As we are of the nature to change, I may soon discover which "anything" into which I may transform. Change is not only possible but it is who we are.

This belief is the source of my optimism and the anchor of my realism. Today, when asked whether I can believe in something, I reply: "It's not beyond my imagination." I remember "inclusiveness," one of the Six Paramitas, which encourages me to open my heart to any and all possibility. So that my heart deepens, mind expands, and eyes widen, for strength and courage. Within these visions lies the universe's beautiful complexity.

Please enjoy the beautiful day.

Buddha Is My Co-Pilot

Some people have an out-of-body experience when they have reached death's edge. Sometimes, however, we begin "seeing the light" when things are just...odd.

I imagine myself in a tiny remote control plane, hovering several feet above, steadying with a quickly-beating front propeller. Next to me in the pilot seat is my companion, the Buddha himself with a notepad. ("Hello Buddha!") The Buddha humbly nods and points beneath us. Below, we observe this week's events:

It begun with our clogged second-floor toliet. This toilet is used by most of our five housemates. Our housemate on bathroom duty this month makes a note on our house whiteboard to the effect, "Second floor toliet broken. Will fix it when I return."

The next day the toliet is leaking water from its pipe. After traveling by shuttle, bus, foot, and possibly buggy, back home, I stumble into the door and I make a bee-line toward the bathroom. My housemate, lounging on the living room couch, informs me that our leak had turned into a leak problem that had absorbed our front hallway ceiling like the Blob. I'm not old enough to remember the actual Blob but I'm pretty sure that this must be identical because it is discolored and it is spreading.

Being the sensible law student that I am, I pull out my cell phone and call our landlord. It turns out that he answers on the first ring. This means that he was expecting a call from someone else and he didn't check the caller ID upon answering. Just my luck. I mention that the kitchen sink leak we called about six weeks ago was well, still leaking. More important, however, was the second-floor leak greeting us on the first-floor. He assured me that he would make a few calls.

I finally make it to the bathroom which is the moment when I receive a phone call. Indeed it is our favorite noisy morning plumber. He's unable to come today but he would love to see us tomorrow morning. Why not? Chicken Little, the sky is falling. So we set a date for tomorrow morning.

Tomorrow arrives. When I was not fully awake our favorite noisy plumber calls and informs me that he won't be there that morning but the next. When I am coming downstairs, I hear crumbling--dropping--splat! (Uh-oh.) I side-step the plaster on the floor doing my best to ignore the hole in our ceiling created by the leak. For now, I make a mental note how nice it is to have a ceiling.

The next two days are a blur. One day I return home to learn that our storage-area water heater began to leak, flooding part of the basement, and that we were waterless. Our landlord sent his friend to repair this leak. Unfortunately his friend knew as much about water heaters as I do (in addition to being a non-repairman, he is a taxi-cab driver). After randomly flipping switches while on the phone with our landlord, he fixes the problem: no water, no leak. Upon hearing this story, in our dimmed kitchen, I stared longingly at the filtered water bottles donated to us from a neighboring group house. One with water...

It was humbling to brush my teeth using a water-filled "Simply" orange juice container in my pantsuit the following morning. Less humbling was the non-flushing toilet in my bathroom. Porter-Johns in a vegan house is a cruel, cruel joke.

The final development came when our favorite noisy morning plumber came at 7am that morning to replace our water heater. Even though I ushered him and his poor assistant into the house, I passed the baton to another brave housemate. Later that afternoon I learned that the plumber upset several housemates when he called his assistant, "nigger," and then, after noticing my housemates' disbelief, spent the remainder of his time convincing them (two white housemates) that Raymond didn't mind. (Of course, a pet-name?) Worse yet, a fed-up housemate called our landlord to witness the house damage from the two leaks reasoning that he should witness the extent of it. The good news is that he did arrive, even though he arrived much later than promised. The bad news was he brought the non-repairman who is apparently an assessor, too. My only explanation for this? Venus is in retrograde.

Other parts of my life were only a little less wacky. At law school I encountered this riddle: if the student government once elected a black president, how can the school not be progressive & diverse? Funny enough that is a riddle I think that I have heard this riddle somewhere before, yet me or my fellow progressive friends of color cannot remember the answer.

Also in the backdrop is meditative madness. Thursday evening I was speaking to a friend about how to wisely prevent or prepare for a potential weekend conflict. This may be an opportunity to participate in my first human shield, making this week's Dharma score pretty high.

Hovering above, Buddha turns toward me: Richael, do you see clearly? Do you see the true nature of this week's events?

Balancing the plane, I reply: Yes, Buddha. I've seen so much these past weeks--the highs and lows. It is what it is and I accept it as so. I feel both discomfort and amusement, suffering and joy, deep pain and deep connection.

Buddha: With a smile?

Me: All with a smile. Perhaps an even bigger one if you can help me land smoothly :)

Three Sizes, Ten Plus Two

Narrator: He puzzled and puzzled till his puzzler was sore. Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn't before! Maybe Christmas, he thought, doesn't come from a store. Maybe Christmas... perhaps... means a little bit more!

Narrator: And what happened then? Well, in Whoville they say that the Grinch's small heart grew three sizes that day. And then the true meaning of Christmas came through, and the Grinch found the strength of ten Grinches plus two. ~How the Grinch Stole Christmas.

When we are sure that our compassion's well has dried is the wonderous, unexpected moment when our heart expands to contain all of the suffering that we experience and others' suffering all the same.