Musings on the Path

Coyote is the Trickster, the border crosser.  Some would say the border violator.  In slang, a coyote is someone who guides people who prefer to not use the official border crossings into the Promised Land.  Religious reformers guide you into a new land, crossing the establishment\’s borders.  It is a scary vocation.  And much needed.

Meditation seems to be a mental exercise—mindfulness, quieting the mind, etc.  And I\’m finding that the body/mind connection is more apparent in my meditation practice than anywhere else in my life.

Some lessons are obvious, if my head is on my chest: I\’m probably asleep.  Some are not so obvious beforehand.  When my mind clears and quiets, I sit up straight.  Without that quiet mind, I find I cannot sit or stand up fully.  Either I cannot find the muscles to relax or they won\’t relax in spite of my efforts.  Until I quiet my mind.

I don\’t do much walking meditation in the formal sense, but in good weather, it\’s nice to walk to the market.  With a quiet mind, the right posture, and staying focused, I walk quickly, with less effort, and less arthritis pain.  When the pace falls off, it\’s always because my mental focus has wandered into solving the future or some imaginary conversation.

So the Zen meditation hall monitor tapping the slumping meditators is helping them stay focused, reminding of the truth that posture matters.

It took several years to understand the difference between practice and rehearsal. We practice to build skills. We rehearse for a performance.

Musicians practice scales and rehearse songs. Études blur that—music written for students to improve skills.  And great études are performed, not just practiced.

Martial artists practice forms, linking individual punches, kicks, blocks into sequences.  They perform forms in contests.  And a fragment of a form may appear in an unrehearsed fight.  Or the form may have come from a historic fight.

When I sit quietly in meditation practice, I am building a skill, strengthening attention.

Life is what happens when we are making other plans.

Rehearsing for a future that did not happen.

In times of change, learners inherit the earth; while the learned find themselves equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists. — Eric Hoffer

At choir practice tonight, I will rehearse Sunday\’s expected hymns, knowing performance is always \”as the Spirit moves.\”

There were so many paths,
   so many people and signs.
The Dark Path\'s entrance lit
   with neon signs.
The Light Path not so well
   illuminated, nor trod.
But that was then
   and now has come down
to just a single path
   to signs I know
though I\'m not sure
   what language.

Paths cross
   without intersecting
and we speak,
   passing bits of road signs,
hazards, and conditions.

One tells of a narrow bridge
   over a deep chasm
he walked the edge of.

I wonder, it was something
   I\'ve passed over,
the scene is familiar
   though the memory faint.

My path is clear
   though the way ahead
is not.

A singular path, though
   others I meet
tell the same of theirs.

I\'ve had choices
   and chosen, I hope,
wisely.  And now
   there is no need
to choose, just travel.

I like the insights into human reality embodied in language.  The Spanish verb esperar is interesting.  It means to wait, to hope.  As one native Spanish speaker explained, \”It is that for which we are willing to wait.\”  In English, those are two very different concepts.

This post is written during Advent, the season from the fourth Sunday before Christmas to Christmas.  It is a season of waiting and hope.  That is, if we truly wait and don\’t go running off to Christmas.  Americans as a group are not good about waiting, it\’s hard.  The Advent color is purple, the same as Lent, another season of waiting and hope.

A post from the Brooklyn to Mars blog.

Build yourself a recovery routine.  As artists, we can find ourselves being sucked into the void without a way out.  This is why so many have succumbed to the drink or worse.  We need to tether a line to the rock of reality before we dive into what we love most about this world — because you really can get lost in there if you’re not careful.  So build a recovery routine.  Sex, yoga, meditation, walking your dog, playing with your kids — these are all things that can bring us back to the real world and help us build energy for the next dive.  Without a routine for re-energizing, our attempts at greatness will be remembered as follies of the unequipped.  This scene is a marathon my friends — don’t kid yourself with sprinter shoes.

This is very similar to a list of practices Jack Kornfield gives for a student who overdosed on meditation (28 hours of seated meditation without moving). Interesting.

1. The rules are changing.
2. Always make a daily \”to do\” list; keep it short, essential, and feel free to amend it, but always write in changes.
3. Make no commitments.  Promise nothing to anyone, even yourself.  If \”maybe\” isn\’t good enough for them, say \”no\”.
4. Sleep a lot and eat whenever you want to.
5. Allow two hours a day, at a minimum, to do nothing.  These will be your most productive times, although you may not realize it.
6. Accept respectfully and with interest all information from yourself, including (but not limited to): boredom, fatigue, headaches, restlessness, cravings for unusual foods, dreams, forgetting to do things you thought you wanted to do, etc.
7. Assume that you know what is best for yourself, even if you cannot explain why. Do not under any circumstances ignore hunches or intuitions, even if you cannot begin to justify them.  As far as possible, appease moods, also.
8. Do not seek, or even permit, the company of individuals with whom you feel a strong desire to be appealing, impressive, charming, enabling or making excuses for, or several thousand miles away.
9. Decide what responsibilities currently held are necessary for survival and for a minimum of complaints from people who impact your daily life (e.g., employers, housemates, spouses, partners, children, and creditors).  Do those things adequately — not extremely well.  Do not alter this set of duties until the transition is completed (except where such alteration is in the nature of the transition, as in job changes).
10. Regard everything you do as an experiment.  Regard all consequences and outcomes of your activities as feedback, as information for future use.  Remember that in light of Rule 1 (above) no valid judgments of self or others can be made at this time.
11. Amend these rules as needed, except #10.

From my own experience, this list requires incredible discipline.

I received this third hand in an e-mail list for spouses and partners of clergy, many of whom were intern or interim ministers.  The sender did not know the origin.  A Google search of the title turns up nothing.  If you know who wrote this, please contact me at jeff dot taylor at i triple e dot org.