• The Coach
• The Book
• The Tool
• The Network

The 27th post in this mindfulness series is about looking deeply and seeing the cosmos (or everything) inside ourselves. This is one of the most essential teachings of Thich Naht Hanh and warrants further exploration. Every time I have heard Thay (beloved teacher) talk about drinking tea, the 14th post in this series, he has discussed the science of interbeing in a way that is deeply profound and sweetly simple.

If we imagine the process of water-oceans, rivers, and seas-evaporating and lifting up into the sky with the help of the sun, we understand the formation of the clouds. Very simple, right? Now when we imagine the water in our bodies, or in our beverages, as the same cloud essence just in yet another form we begin to understand the nature of interbeing.

This is so simple to understand, yet so challenging to remember! Particularly when we take the concept of interbeing even further. To reflect on the fact that my DNA and your DNA are 99-point-something percent the same (and the DNA of a banana isn’t that far off either), we can either say, “wow, we are all in this together” like the 99% of us represented by the valiant, generous and dedicated people in the Occupy Wall Street movement, or we can say, “wow, that less than 1% is really powerful”. Personally, I like thinking about the 99% that we all share in common. It makes me feel happy.

The past couple of days have blessed me with opportunities to give and receive feedback on a very personal level with my sister and a few friends. I have also received suggestions from a spiritual teacher I met at the retreat where this 30-day mindfulness post idea was born.

Alongside this collaborative feedback process I have prepared for a presentation I am giving on Thursday. And the theme that ties all of this together is the phrase “I see you.” This phrase, the greeting of the Na’vi and Zulu peoples in Africa and featured in the movie Avatar, is how I would like to begin my presentation Thursday.

To have a heart-felt feedback exchange with someone, let alone many people, is so joyful. Even when–or perhaps especially when–we are triggered to be a bit defensive, as in “I have already thought of that” or “I’ve been doing that for years”, this type of genuine advice is a blessing.

One piece of advice I received was a practice by Thich Naht Hanh so naturally I would like to share it here as he has inspired this whole series! My teacher, who is just getting to know me, heard my “make it work” tenacity come through loud and clear so she advised me to adopt his practice of turning things over to spirit with the specific phrase, “Buddha! Take over!”

It works. In addition to feeling lighter and clearer about a big decision, I am again connected to that sweet energy of mindfulness that I re-membered at the retreat. I feel seen.
Try it out!

With this mindfulness practice unfolding I have made an important breakthrough. The 30-day “time” frame (of posting inspired insights) has been an important container, which I am compassionately experiencing as flexible enough to hold consecutive experiences yet not limited by my perception of 24-hour time. With this understanding of time “containment” also comes a metaphorical awareness of the span of my lifetime.

In this post I am exploring the phrase I’ve heard Thich Naht Hanh share, “by looking deeply we see the cosmos”. This phrase came back to me because of two triggers—a Jungian lecture I attended last night, and my subsequent dream. The lecture was about the process of integrating the soul with one’s ego, or developed character, through deepening the relationship with—listening to—the body. In this lecture, Teresa of Avila’s Interior Castle was referenced, along with various spiritual practices of looking deeply such as Sufi dancing, Haitian voodoo, and contemplative movement. The reference to Teresa’s Interior Castle helped me instantly see the connection within the dream I had early this morning.

Do you ever dream that the people with you are simply versions of you? Aware that the characters (or enchanters?) at your side are your own person-i-fications, you become more motivated to pay attention!

In my dream I emerge from a lower level of this mossy, sprawling stone estate (through a hatchway of sorts) into an expansive, sunny interior courtyard. With my thin, vibrant, white/blond haired lady of the house “self”, I cross a short distance to a small cornflower blue painted wooden porch. I am impressed with her estate, yet the only thing she finds true joy from is the window she built that opens onto the porch from the dark dining room we have walked into.

I have many analytical interpretations of this, along with the other “me” characters in the dream (including Johnny Depp), but the point of sharing this dream is that the process of looking deeply does in fact reveal the entire cosmos. The woman’s one small window, which looks into the inner courtyard, is what each of us is building with our mindfulness practices!

To see the interior castle, the infinite kingdom within, is the rich reward for struggling to find both meaning within each of our experiences and joy within each of our relationships, each moment of each day. The practice of mindful breathing, speaking, listening, eating, drinking, living, is the practice of learning how to see.

Getting all the way to day 26 of this post-retreat 30-day mindfulness practice has been much more challenging than I had expected. Not only did I not simply write 30 different inspiring quotes from Thich Naht Hanh all at once and schedule them to post each day through Hoot Suite (I vow to get this going soon!), we had an unprecedented snowstorm and power outage to contend with—helping me let go of my “definition” of 30 days (not exactly consecutive), I have struggled with an increased sensitivity to others’ unmindful speech, which I swear has piqued to give me lots of fodder for my practice, and I have found it challenging to authentically come up with each day’s post. It has taken me anywhere from 20 minutes to the more common two hours each day to write and post on my website, on Facebook, in various LinkedIn groups, and on my newest social media Twitter.

Another aspect of the practice that has challenged me is the foundation of the practice, breathing. No, I haven’t struggled with asthma or pneumonia, I’ve found myself wanting this practice, and my daily posts, to be about something more exciting than the breath. Mindfulness always comes back to the breath. There, said it, done. Now what?

Truth is, remembering the breath—and what an amazing gift that is—is quite difficult all day long, let alone randomly throughout the day. Then, factor in various stresses, not the least of which for me has been eating sweets and suffering the resulting hot flashes and extremely impaired circulation at night, and you have a recipe for mind-less-ness.

All decisions we make can seem mindful. It seemed perfectly appropriate that I should overdo the milkshakes with delicious super premium ice cream and not-so-frozen strawberries given that our refrigerator freezer just died. But if I were mindful of my very obvious reactions (I learned that milk solids a la evaporated or condensed milk from other sweets is the crème de la crème offender) I would have simply accepted the financial hit and passed on the other leftovers.

And this understanding leads me to perhaps my most important post in this series of 30: the five mindfulness trainings. About 10 years ago I attended a retreat with Thich Naht Hanh (or Thay, beloved teacher) at UMass. It was my first experience of silence over an extended period of time each day and I was completely swept away by the calmness settling into my body and mind, the heightened awareness of my surroundings, and the process of practice in Thay’s Order of Interbeing tradition. At this retreat I vowed to practice five mindfulness trainings, which seemed rather daunting at the time, and I received the dharma name: Grateful Smile of the Heart.

The Five Mindfulness Trainings I received have been revised. There are two versions: the original and the current. Briefly, they are summarized as follows:

First: Reverence for Life – not engaging in any act of killing in one’s thinking or in one’s way of life
Second: True Happiness – practicing generosity and social justice with specific emphasis on vocation
Third: True Love – cultivating sexual responsibility
Fourth: Loving Speech – listening deeply to inspire confidence, joy and hope
Fifth: Nourishment and Healing – mindful eating, drinking and consuming to transform fear, anger and confusion

Each month I read these with my Wednesday morning meditation group, like I did this morning. Reading them together in a group and then talking about what “jumped out” or inspired us, is what has helped them become rooted in my daily life. I can always see room for improvement yet I can also see progress, which keeps me going and motivated. I am now preparing to take the 14 mindfulness trainings because I am again ready to deepen my practice.

Please feel free to post here any comments you have about your practice. It takes a village!

Sincerely yours,
Grateful Smile of the Heart

True love holds no grudges. When i hold a grudge i cut myself off from true love with you. ~Thich Naht Hanh

People naturally fear misfortune and long for good fortune; but if the distinction is carefully studied, each often turns into the other. The wise person learns to meet changing circumstances of life neither elated by success nor depressed by failures.

While breathing is thankfully controlled by our autonomic nervous system, it is also an incredibly powerful catalyst for mindfulness. We do not HAVE to attend to our breath, but when we do, amazing transformation is possible.

Thich Naht Hanh teaches the 16 exercises of mindful breathing in order to help people understand and employ the power of the breath in each moment day to day. He inspires movie stars, lawyers, members of U.S. Congress, engineers, and architects. One architect, he explained recently, was so moved by these 16 exercises he intends to build a 16 story stupa or pagoda.

The 16 Exercise of Mindful Breathing:

Building a little community one rock at a time. A sweet reminder of how our efforts support each other.

Wow. My region has been slammed with snow for Halloween, keeping much of our homes powerless and in the dark – some projected to be without power for 4-5 days! Being powerless is a trying experience, particularly when you tend to get bored very easily.

The excitement of the tree falling on my cousin’s truck and our brave Saturday night party guests not being able to travel the roads home–despite giving it their best shot–certainly gave us memories we would never have otherwise. Walking in the middle of the road up hill in a Narnia-esque winter wonderland, looking for friend’s cars but finding a different car and a plow truck while the other half of our party went in the opposite direction was quite the surreal late night experience. The fact that we’d lost power didn’t seem to matter much. Yet.

After the excitement wore off the next day and the clean up work began, the reality of not having power began to set in. We were cold and my mothering instincts kicked in. Put socks on! There are hats and scarves and gloves in the bin! Make sure you’re warm and eat last night’s leftovers! The more pressing concern of our guests was getting their vehicles dug out so they could get home and assess their own situations.

With a full day to simply feel the effects of pushing ourselves to not only decorate and prepare the house for a party (we were expecting 40) and shoveling heavy wet snow for hours (24 inches or so) and not finding expected comfort in a hot beverage or warm house, but to also clean up the very messy house, not know when power was coming back on and feeling disconnected from others (dead or dying cell phones) … it was a bit unsettling.

In keeping with the mindfulness practice, I found myself remembering a very visceral experience I had at the retreat with Thich Naht Hanh (aka Thay “beloved teacher”). It was the second full day of the retreat; I had really settled in with the silence until after lunch and went on a walking meditation led by Thay. His words from the dharma talk beforehand resonated so deeply that I felt as if I was one with Mother Earth:

“We must seek happiness, not dwell in suffering!”

Even when we “are” powerless, we can always find happiness if we look for it. My body was cold and I was sniffling and sneezing non stop. Yet I had wool socks under my slippers and my feet were warm. They were happy. When I observed this happiness in my feet, it spread to other warm parts of me, to other happy circumstances like my family all together hanging out with nothing to do but play and seek happiness together.

The eight couples that celebrated Halloween 2011 together at our home had an exciting time which may become lasting happy memories. And as I overheard my son telling someone on the phone today, “the power outage brought our family together. It was fun!”

For those of us who give thanks before each meal, this offering shared at the Blue Cliff Monastery (and other Thich Naht Hanh retreat centers) might be of interest:

I also like to substitute the phrase “loving work” for “hard work”!