meditation

Day and Night

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There an element in the mind that can keep me up at night. Not all the time, but sometimes. Anything almost can do it: taxes, old boyfriends, current work competitors, regret long lasting towards my mother. This last one can especially go on forever as she left her body years and years ago so it’s a no ending one sided conversation. A way I torture myself, I suppose.

In the daytime, all this disappears. No such psychic monster exists on waking. It’s as though the light of day has washed it all away.

There’s an in-between, however. YouTube helps in the middle of the night. If the thoughts become too overpowering, I turn the power over to the phone. I can listen to anything, anytime. My favorite is High Fraser reading Agatha Christie. It’s amazing how many people he can be in an audiobook. I love him.

Sure, maybe murder isn’t a great springboard into the unconscious world of sleep and dream, however Christie has no sex, no violence, no gore or torture. Mostly just intrigue in rich people’s houses.

I could listen to someone on YouTube who is spiritually enlightened. Lord knows there’s an infinite quantity. Problem is I have been on the spiritual path for so many decades, that the path has worn to dirt and walking on it creates clouds of dust which make for hazy vision.

I never saw my school at night. As a child, I left school at 2:30 and I made it home for dinner. We all did. We went to our friends houses or the park. Judy had a long haired dachshund and I had a short haired one. She was my best friend and her house was between school and my house. When time came, dinner bells sounded and mothers yelled. Judy’s house on Winterberry and my house on Maryknoll weren’t too far apart and I was a fast runner in those days.

Only once in 2nd grade did I see my school after dark. It was lit up for a book fair. It was magic. I got a book about dragons and I felt omniscient as I’d just learned to spell.

Now kids are in aftercare till after dark during daylight savings time. No magic in that.

Later as a young adult, I enjoyed pools at night with the round white light coming from the walls underwater: Magic. Walking hand and hand on a golf course under the moon: Magic.

Now, as an older adult, I sit in the hot tub very late at night hearing the owl say “who?who?who?” Magic.

Dharma talk

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I tried to draw her as she was giving the talk on the importance of community. Referring to that story where Buddha himself says spiritual friends are the whole of your practice, not the half.

I am in a bad mood and say “pshaw!” Or something like that. I’m thinking in my wordless mind something from a gentler decade when exclamations like” Bullshit” we’re yet to be dreamed of.

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I couldn’t quite get her face down but the statue looming over her was easy to get. Her head was drifting beneath the grand stone giant like a delicate moon made of barely illuminated paper.

There she was in her calm authority. Both of them, real and stone, representing this group consciousness which by definition allows no one to raise higher than the group.

I in my ppshaw say, who was with Buddha under the tree? Who was with Jesus in the desert? I’ll tell you who, no one.

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Two sides of the Coin

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Normally, I’m all for meditation. All over it in fact, every morning.

There are “mindfulness” programs in schools, especially inner city ones where all the kids are on the free lunch program and 70% of the kids when asked will answer yes to the question, ” Do you know anyone whose been shot and killed?”
Ditto, for this program in jails. This program is very helpful and successfull. Simply put, it brings in the pause ( the old “count to ten”) before you hit someone on the playground. It’s very helpful. In schools like the ones I teach at, this program is maybe less necessary.

After school art class had been over for a while and I was cleaning up. David was hanging out while I did this. I thought he was waiting for his parent to pick him up. He is lithe and lively and bounced around in his tiny six year old body talking to me as I gathered my tools and such.
Almost done, I checked my list and saw that David was supposed to go to the schools’ after care program so I mention perhaps he should get on down there.

His bouncy body slumps into a giant C as he plunks down in a chair.
“Oh no.”
“What’s wrong? Don’t you like after care? Why not?”
“UGH! They make us Meditate.”
(Feigning indignation I say) “What!? Meditate!? You mean you don’t get to run around with a ball or something? What do they make you do, listen to a bell?” (Knowing they do this)
“Meditation is, well, (groan) it’s hard to explain.”