A circle begins where it ends
Yesterday we finished another 8-week series in our Moving Into Balance awareness program. It is such a blessing to be able to offer small words, and have the hungry heart make of them great meals. Look at these amazing people: you toss out a few lentils, a few peppercorns, and with the human ability to create art from clay, at the end of a few weeks play, those lentils are the finest fare, the most satisfying, the most delicately flavored…
Lentils, the color and texture of dust!
I wonder sometimes how to describe this series. We began it as a framework to offer people tools, tools for those who wanted to take the spirit and the peace that exists in a place of practice, in the company of others who share their views and values, and bring it into that storm of energies we have in our homes and in our places of employment. We go away to practice yoga, we go away to worship a god, and for those measured minutes we find and share peace with those around us. How do you take that seed of stillness, of momentary contentment, and plant it at home, water it, and help it grow to a sheltering tree?
Thich Nhat Hanh has said (and I regret misquoting him here, not having the source material at hand) that to further one’s practice, to allow it to be all, one should choose a monastic lifestyle. But he speaks equally to householders, whose work is much more challenging, and whose lives give us the children and the fabric of greater community that is vital to the Whole. He says that here, in the meditation circle… this is not your practice. It is out there where you have such ample opportunity to really practice, to increase your ability to be patient, to learn compassion for others, to encourage an amazingly strong stillness… in the thick of things, since most of these qualities are difficult to find if not within yourself.
Those participants who join us to move into balance are the body, and our words a bit of air, the lentils of our words are just the flavor and color of dust. And that simple diet is refreshing; it allows one to forget all those sugars for a while, and the caffeine and the alcohol. Eight weeks is a good period of time to be in a circle of new friends. We draw the circle ourselves, so we know it is strong. Outside, we grow tired holding our truth before so many who have not practiced compassion and who have not looked inside. Holding a truth when it is vehemently resisted actually helps to clarify it. But holding a truth when it is invisible to others… that tires the arms.
We grow tired as we practice clarity in the fog. It is good to return to the circle we have drawn, take a deep breath, and listen to the audible Light.
We begin another series on April 16th. It is even more important for the teacher to teach, than it is for the listener to hear, because the teacher has already made it his or her life, and so it must be lived. The listener is still deciding; the listener may have heard something that frees them, but has not quite decided. You decide with practice, not with the thought I will do this. You decide with repetition. For those who feel a resonance – those who actually enjoy the taste of lentils – repetition builds a sanctuary. It is the repeated word which echoes in the mind, and it is the refrain of a melody which is remembered and to which the body and the mind add delicate harmonies. We choose to return to those places which have brought us stillness and beauty, and energy and grace.
Later on, enough of one’s practice has become experience, has really become embodied in how the breath moves and even how our very cells work, that we are able to perceive greater light. We become more aware of grace, and with that awareness realize that, beyond what we have been able to see this far, there is more grace still.
At the beginning of each 8-week session we write a letter to ourselves. It is a letter to our future self, actually, from the current and immediate one, to be opened and regarded when we arrive (however briefly) on the doorstep of that day. I like to write to myself as well, because I am always smarter when I am not trying to be, and gentler as well. This last session I wrote myself a little poem, which I can’t seem to find tonight. The line which sticks with me, though, reminds me the goal is never arrive but instead be:
The light is always greater
that today’s eyes
can perceive.
