Barry Garden Path

The distinction between what I think and what I feel is not what it once seemed to be. What a surprise it has been to discover that to feel is so much more than to know. Perhaps it is a deeper way of knowing, without all the cognitive frills and references that now seem to have cluttered up my life. Things have gotten much simpler. And a lot more clear.

Doing it “right” is, for me, not so much about knowing as it is about feeling. My mind may still clamor to know, inform and instruct. But union, intimacy and absorption is about my ability to feel, not know.

I now think that mindfulness has little to do with mind, except perhaps to set an intention to be aware, to be full of this or that. Perhaps the word should be “feel-fulness” because the experience of union and absorption is not one of the mind but what seems to me to be more of the heart.

My mind must relax, let go of its appointments and duties for me to truly feel. My mind may gather and present data, information and perceptions. But it is the heart that truly knows. There is nothing rational about feeling except for the signposts the might lead to what I feel.

For me to feel is not a reaction, not emotion. To feel is a letting go, a reaching out, an awareness at the deepest level. Emotions may arise, but they are a response to the heart feeling, the awareness. What I feel is not an emotion, but it is an open door to what is present, an opening to an experience of awareness. To feel is not to react but to be intimately aware.

For me, to feel is to enter into presence with a rock, a plant, a person. It is neither good or bad, neither positive or negative. To feel is to be present with a deep sense of awareness.

To feel is to experience overwhelming joy. The mind is finally completely at rest, at ease, without agitation. The mind even seems totally disengaged. To feel is to arise at formless insight, unshaped awareness. It is to know without any reference to past experience. When I feel, my storehouse of experiences is of little use, except perhaps to guide me until that shapeless moment of awareness.

To feel, I must forget. All that has transpired before now has lost its relevance, and I know as for the first time.

Memory, for me, may even cloud or distract my ability to feel. When I reference myself or what has gone before, my clarity of feeling diminishes. The memory of myself or my experience is a great distraction. Self-referencing keeps me from the deep feeling. I am most aware when I ignore that it is “I” who is feeling. The more I am aware it is I who feels, the less likely the feeling will be deep or intimately engaging.

This has been a wonderful shift in awareness. For me, letting go of my rational supports has lifted the fog and revealed a new and exciting landscape. All I have to do is feel, and feel alone.

I do not want my remaining life to be a string of disappointments. It has been easy for me to get disappointed when things do not turn out as I wanted or even expected. I am learning to accept the turn of events as they evolve and not judge them harshly when they fail to measure up to what I wanted.

A cold winter day this past season may have been an occasion for discomfort or even difficulty. But I wanted to recognize it just as it was: an uncomfortable and difficult day. It did me no good to be disappointed that it was not warmer or more sunny when it was in fact cold and dreary. It did me no good to be disappointed that it was not the kind of winter day I might have wanted or liked.

For me, it might have been suitable for me to complain that a day is cold and dreary. But why would I be disappointed just because it is not what it clearly is not? Why be disappointed because it is not sunny and warm?

It might be that I am now sad that a beloved plant is not coming back this spring. But I am not disappointed that it appears to be dead. I am actually a little surprised when my plants return, just as they have in the past, but I am not expecting that things will be a certain way. I am not likely to be disappointed.

For me, it is the difference that comes when I am not so attached to something I want to happen. The more I grasp and cling to a future, expected event, the more likely I am to be disappointed. I try not to live in the future. I try not to focus on how things will be or how I want them to be. Then I am not disappointed when things don’t turn out just as I wanted or anticipated.

There is an unpredictable aspect of all future outcomes, and that especially includes human behavior. For me, humans seem eminently unpredictable. I try not to set too many expectations about how people will act or react. Instead, I try to focus on how they are acting right not, without much interpretation of what the future implications are. The more I try to predict how humans will act, or anticipate how I want them to act, the more likely I am to be disappointed.

I can get caught up in the importance of a plant’s return to my garden, or how I want someone to behave. I may be no less annoyed or saddened when things do not turn out as I would prefer. But I am not necessarily disappointed.

The feeling quality of the experience is remarkably different. The key factor for me has to do with how much I grasp or cling for future events to be a certain way.

I may be sad if it rains on a day I planed work in the garden, but I need not be disappointed unless I am so attached to a bright sunny day. I may not be happy it is raining, but I am not attached to the sunny day that never happened. For me, it is a more flexible way to live, and is an easier way for me to enjoy gardening or being with people.

No one else can manage my disappointment but me. It is mine alone to control. The more I am attached to an unrealized future, the more I am likely to be disappointed. The more I marvel and am even surprised by current happenings, the less likely I am to be disappointed . I may even be able to enjoy a rainy day that interferes with my abandoned plans for gardening.

When I am disappointed, I think that I am resisting what is. I am staying attached to a notion of how I think things should be or how I want them to be. When I am disappointed, I am not angry at how things are as much as I am angry that things are different from what I want.

Disappointment for me is a frustrated realization that this is not the way I want something to be. It is a frustration that things are as they are and they do not measure up to the unreality to which I remain attached.

It is satisfying for me to recognize that, even when I don’t like how things might turn out, I don’t have to be disappointed as well.

There is a small, solitary clump of orange tulips in my side garden. There are now six remaining blooms that remind me of my internal struggle with my churning racism. I don’t think my tulips expected to play such a role.

It began as I sat on my deck, putting on my gardening shoes. A yellow school bus pulled up along my boulevard garden, and three young boys bounced out into the garden, followed by the adult woman bus driver. I was vaguely aware of them, and only mildly irked that they were walking on the plants obviously growing in the garden.

What caught my attention were the words “pick flowers” coming from one of the boys. I jumped to my feet and shouted “Hey” as soon as I reached the edge of the deck and I saw that one of the boys was up in my garden with a strangle hold on a tulip. All the while the woman was standing near the bus, not paying attention to what the boys were doing. She seemed unconcerned about the boys having announced their intention to “pick flowers.” She made no response to their picking flowers.

What followed was an unconnected exchange of her shouting to the boys to get back on the bus, my trying to tell the boys that if they pick the flowers no one else can enjoy them. I pointed out to her that they were walking through my garden as they got back on the bus. She told me what a rough day she had had and that she never has parked in that spot before. I’m not sure there was a single thread of continuity in our change.

I found myself muttering to myself about the great cultural divide between white and black people, and wondering if it will ever be overcome. I was mostly disturbed, not by the behavior of the three boys, but by the woman’s apparent indifference to what they were doing. She could only respond to their getting in trouble, and totally ignored what was a latent teachable moment.

For me, it was an experience that emphasized the cultural difference between some black people and some of us white people. I wondered how many generations it will take to bridge our differences.

I simply cannot imagine a white woman walking down the sidewalk with three young boys and her not intervening if they announced their intent to “pick flowers”. I simply cannot imagine a white woman disinterestedly standing by while they climbed up the hill and began tugging at tulips. I can now easily imagine a black woman being that disinterested and that disengaged.

My imagination has been fed by a concrete experience, and now my racism has another issue to deal with. My remaining tulips seem mute, even unaware of their beheaded companions now lying next to them. They may even be unaware of the danger of passing boys.

However, those same orange tulips now shout out to me a reminder of the danger of young black boys accompanied by a black adult woman. My concern about the cultural divide has taken a hit. My remaining tulips seem OK. I don’t feel so OK.

I have spent so much energy and attention on learning how to speak clearly. It has especially been important to reveal what I was thinking. The emphasis has been to clearly share in words what I was feeling, thinking or intending. Speaking clearly and with meaning has been both my intention and my habitual effort. It seemed the right thing to do.

I now appreciate the value of keeping things unspoken. I see the place and importance of being silent. I am finding this is valuable in small groups and in one-to-one relationships. Knowing when to keep things unspoken, perhaps for only a while, is becoming very important to me. I am appreciating its value.

I actually have habitually been a good listener, and that is a trait I am even more aware of as I consider the value of words unspoken. I am learning the value of things left unspoken. Sometimes leaving things unspoken is not only enough, it is actually better that they remain unspoken. It is better sometimes for me to simply be present and attentive.

I feel like I appear to have come full circle. This decision to be silent, leave things unspoken may once have been my default, and that may be what seems to be the same. But now it is significantly different for me to leave things unspoken. A long time ago, I was simply unable to speak. I typically did not know how to express what I was thinking or felt. So thoughts and feelings went unspoken.

Now it is different, mostly because I am much more in control. I understand much better the workings of my inner life, and am able to speak more freely and clearly when I choose. My inner awareness is so much stronger, and I can choose whether or not to leave that awareness unspoken. I know that I can typically speak in a deep and revealing way, if it seems appropriate, and if I choose.

It is often not appropriate to speak, even though I know I can. I know I can choose to leave things unspoken, and that is sometimes the better way.

When I am not speaking, I am often much more present, more attentive to what others are speaking or doing. I am much more attentive to their words and their actions. My engagement with others is much more reciprocal when I resist or ignore the habitual urge to speak. There are times to leave some things unspoken, and simply be present.

I want to listen more and pay even better attention than I have. I want to develop the habit of critically examining the question of whether others might benefit from what I might say. Will they be better off if I speak, or will they be better off if I leave things unspoken. Will I be better off if I do not speak.

Even I may be better off if I leave some things unspoken, when I am more selective about when to speak or what to say. I want to be more attentive to the option I have of leaving things unspoken.

I intend to put more attention on being aware and being very present. I want to ignore the urge to speak, leaving many things unspoken.

I remember when the notion of being in full bloom had such meaning and excitement for me. I felt enthused, even enthralled by my own blooming and the blooming of all those around me, friends, companions and lovers. That has changed as I and those I know have become more seasoned.

The experience of blooming is still a thing of beauty for me, wonderful to see, touch and enjoy. For me, the freshness of blooming is such an expression of all that lies latent within and offers an alluring promise of what is yet to be.

I still adore and enjoy the blossomed beauty of those around me, much as I do when I walk through my garden. The joy I feel is real and moves my heart to open much as the blossoms do themselves. The scent and presence of blossoms are lovely to experience and behold.

Now I know there is more. I now understand and savor the beauty and depth that only passing seasons can draw forth and produce. No longer only full of promise as blossoms once were, pears hang on the tree, lush with the sweetness and fullness that was scantly present before. There is a ripeness and fullness that comes only because of long days spent basking in the warmth of many suns.

The ripeness has a fullness and depth only dreamed of in those early days of blossoming, before the seasoning began. The touch of ripened fruit has so much more intense awareness than the yielding, ephemeral petals of a blossom recently opened. The fruit is no longer so fragile and fragrant as the blossom once was. It has become the serious and seasoned opening to indulgent taste, an invitation to savor the abundance within.

The passing, almost illusory beauty of the blossom has been replaced by the richness of a well-appointed, succulent source of delight. This is the real thing that only the passing of seasons might produce. It is no longer a lovely promise of things to come.

The seasoned taste has at last arrived. It is the result and embodiment of days upon days of sun, wind and rain. The seasoned fruit is lush with the sweet-flowing juices of a life well-lived.

I have lovely memories of days that witnessed full bloom in myself and in others close to me. I now know that the realization of well-seasoned ripeness in myself and others is a source of even greater joy.

This might be so only because those around me and I have been ripened by days lived in such a way that they have left us so full of seasoning. What I am noticing is that it now seems to require but scant effort to bring the sweet experience of presence into the arena of engagement.

This is the result of the passing of seasons. This is what we have become. There is no need to try hard, we only need to be present, reveal ourselves as we truly are, and the juices flow. It is a time to enjoy the seasoned, sweet presence of one another.

I remember it well. It was so wonderful to feel the joy of blossoming. How could I have know then the joy of ripened, seasoned fruit yet to come.

When someone described me yesterday as a former buddhist monk, my first impulsive action was to correct her. Her reaction caused me to realize that she was strangely correct and actually very insightful.

My arc to buddhist thought has been a long and gradual one. I may have appeared, in my younger days, to be a Franciscan friar. But actually I had begun to think more as a buddhist monk might think. I was still a very young and inexperienced monk when I began to turn to and rely on my own insights and early experience. My own observations became a trusted guide to my thinking, living and decisions.

Initially , this was not so clearly an act of rejection of the concepts handed to me by trusted teachers, those purveyors of religion whom I listened to. Initially, I was more likely to bend traditional concepts to fit my own way of thinking. I actively scavenged traditional concepts to support and justify the way I thought.

First, I would focus on what I had evolved to understand. Then, often with serious study and research, I would search how traditional thought might fit. I might even select marginal ideas that seemed to conclude what I had already come to understand.

My teachers called this sophistry, and that was not considered a compliment. Those were the people who knew no other way than what they had been carefully, forcefully taught. They may not have challenged my thought process as sophistry, but I knew they saw the pitfalls of my approach.

Those who may have been aware of my rebellious thought process, mostly honored my ability to shape their view of the world to my own. To them, I was a rather compliant monk. The one teacher who resisted my thinking had to experience the open defiance of someone who was recognized a top student.

Now, years later, I notice that I have been describing myself as a former monk to my two sons. It is my way of describing my former life in a monastery with a term out of their fantasy world of gaming. For them, a monk is someone with mystical powers. For me, that has been a mildly reliable description of how I have come to see my growth in the experience of insight and mindfulness.

I realize that I have a deep identification with the notion of being a monk. I have in recent years thought of myself as an urban monk, as one who lives and moves in a world of tangible, active humanity.

My monastery, my separation from the active world is my home, my garden and my mind. I am not at all barricaded in that monastic place. Instead, I invite friends, lovers, and even strangers to enter my place of retreat. It seems that my heart flows out constantly from that sacred arena of seclusion. I often return to my monastery for time to reflect, to read and to write.

I know and now understand that I am walking in footprints formerly set out by the Buddha and by a hundred generations of the Buddha’s followers. Some things feel very familiar, some things feel new. But I don’t at all regard myself as follower of the Buddha, even though the thoughts of the buddhist tradition often give rich meaning to my own experience. I am still a non-conforming monk, I suppose.

Instead, I consider that the living Buddha resides in my own heart, still guiding me in subtle ways. This has, unknown to me, always been this way. The arc of the Buddha’s presence has been long and often subtle, anchored as it is in the early days when I was first a monk.

I think that I have never left the life of a monk, even though it is now a form of life that is strictly interior. In some ways, however, it manifests itself even more today in the way I relate to people, plants and the planet. The connections I experience daily are what I consider to be the life of a dedicated monk.

I may not manifest myself in the robes of a monk any longer, but my heart is still that of the young monk who set out on this arc of living many decades ago. I continue to be the monk I believe I was destined to be.

I am aware that I could not do it alone. I can become unfolded only so much alone, but in reality I am not alone. The unfolding, the opening up has been the result of tender presence and gentle touch. There are some things that require the presence of a companion.

I know that, like the large maple tree in my back yard, the buds have been there, formed and folded, but waiting to open wide. The buds open only when they are touched by the soft, warm breeze of April. For me the breeze must be in the form of the touch of spoken words, the caress that comes in many ways.

The awaking is an unfolded slumber that has finally surrendered to a call of an April breeze that is both close and yet distinct. Perhaps, it is the diminishing illusion of separateness that has brought this unfolding experience. Feeling the presence of an-other has been to experience the sameness we both inhabit.

For me, there is a recognition that the unfolded bud has now become the essence of the April breeze, and the breeze is now the essence of the bud. Both are forever changed. The memory is all that exists of the past. The opening is now what is present.

When the bud has unfolded, it is no longer just a bud. It is now a bud touched by the breeze. The breeze has become a lasting part of the unfolded bud. Both are forever changed. Neither bud or breeze can return to their former state.

This is a wondrous place to be, a wondrous thing to experience. Know that the experienced mingling of essence is but a discovery of what already exists. However, there is such a great joy that there are moments when I can be aware that we actually connected as one.

This kind of joy demands that the bud and breeze can yield to the other. Perhaps, it requires that two people be both April breeze and bud for the other. It becomes apparent that when the buds are open, there is no turning back. There is no longer a breeze, no longer folded buds. April has truly arrived, the world will no longer be as it was. The unfolding has occurred.

I’m beginning to think that it must require that someone be somewhat fearless to be in a dynamic relationship with me.   

I am choosing what I consider a fully human and wonderful freedom.   I choose to be both a free spirit without bounds and still deeply connected, bound as a close and loyal friend and lover.

I am aware that it must take courage for anyone to be a close friend or lover with me, to feel confident and self-assured in the freedom of mutual flight.   It must take courage to rely on me as a partner, but also on the strength of one own’s wings.   

It is difficult for me to imagine anyone in a relationship with me who is fearful of soaring flight or who is hesitant to plunge rapturously into deep and uncharted realms.   Friends and lovers alike must sometimes be confused and mystified by my occasional abandon and transparency, but still they arrive and stand by me.  Sometimes they soar with me, caught on an updraft of joy and elation.  

I am aware that it must require that someone abandon their fears and self-doubt if they are to be close to someone who is constantly exploring, constantly pushing into what looks like a life in thin air.   It turns out that some have faltered or turned aside, chosen something other than risky flight.   

However, I am grateful for all those other companions who have fearlessly come close, especially those who have accepted my invitation to imagine with me, take risks and be unconstrained.   

The realm of relationship is not a place suitable for ballroom dancing, a place where one leads and the other follows. I prefer the ways of contra dancing, where the roles of partners do not allow one to lead or dominate the other.

I’ve made the mistakes with partners, first being the one who dominates. Then I gradually became subservient as she clawed her way to a position of dominance. Not at all a nice way to dance.

I now choose a dance where we are neither dominant or dominated. I choose a dance that is instead a whirling frenzy of two people in motion, two people who have abandoned themselves to the dance.

I have gone through the difficulty of several serious break-ups. Twice I have had to deal with the challenges of getting officially divorced. People, on hearing me mention that I recently got divorced, have typically offered a sympathetic “That’s too bad.”

I think I have startled them when I have replied, “No, it has been good. Difficult, but good.” I have few regrets for the years I have spent with my partners. Nor do I regret the decision that we made, sometimes jointly, to end that partnership.

I think that I have actually learned a lot, and the evidence of that I see in the joy that flows through my life, day after glowing day. I may simply be someone who has to squeeze a number of avocados before finding one that is properly ripened and promises to please my pallet.

Perhaps I never have had the skill to recognize a ripe avocado when I saw one. Maybe recognizing and selecting a deep relationship is no different for me. Maybe the selection is by its nature a temporary one because I am learning to be more insightful as I go.

Sometimes, I had to learn just how to grasp and squeeze an avocado to recognize its degree of ripeness, suitability and promise. I think that I am getting much better at avocado picking. And I love the taste of a properly ripened avocado.