I am back in the tiny house. It was such a gift going on retreat. Being in Carol’s Cozy Cottage felt so much like Still Waters, where my soul has been nurtured for decades.
While on retreat, a dharma sister shared a powerful poem she saw in a post by a Chicago Cognitive Behavior Therapy practice. Here are a few lines from “The Felt-Sense Prayer” from a podcast by Tara Brach:
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I am a messenger with good news, as disturbing as I can be at times.
I am wanting to guide you back to those tender places in yourself, the place where you can hold yourself with compassion and honesty.
If you look beyond my appearance you may find that I am a voice from your soul.
Solitude, contemplation, meditation…. to many people these sound like torture. To those of us who are on this path, solitude is the place where our soul can breathe deeply.
Saturday morning was brisk, but the sky was clear so I bundled up and went for a walk. Carol’s husband, Steve, has been on a mission of planting trees. LOTS of trees….
The early morning frost had created an enchanted forest.
Before leaving on retreat, I received word about a friend seriously ill with the coronavirus. Another friend is in the hospital. One of the women at the retreat was going to be with her mom, and might not be back to the retreat. Her mom passed that night. Buddhism is no stranger to impermanence. Quite the opposite. And just as I was so moved by the beauty of the ice crystals , I was also inspired by the brevity of its existence.
A Haiku by Debra Basham
@ Carol’s Cozy Cottage
November 14, 2020
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“Fleeting”
Icy crystals cling
playfully to willing plants
Glistening for now
Nothing lasts beyond
this moment – precious and full
Can you see it too?
Like fairy dust spread
just when you are not looking
To surprise and bless
Shapes, angles, light wait
to be seen in their glory
By humanity
Bounteous beauty
beauty in ALL the being
Lay waste the longing
Frozen in this time,
asking the frost to linger
Is futile at best
Vanishing quickly,
our lives like this autumn frost
must be loved right now
They too are fleeting
I had some internet instability so much of the time I was only able to call in and listen to the dharma talks. Not being seen or heard was a sort of solitude in and of itself.
Some amazing insights came during my yoga practice Saturday morning when I noticed my shoulders were trying to support the low core. I began hearing, “Trust the low core to do it’s work. You can trust it. It is safe.”
The SCS/NLP material on the drama triangle came into my awareness and I realized the way all three roles on the drama triangle work together is perfect: playing all the roles balances karma!
We have been studying a Mahāyāna Buddhism concept of the three bodies, or modes of being: the dharmakaya; the sambhogakaya; and the nirmanakaya. For this post, suffice it to say that I could see how the drama triangle corresponds to the nirmanakaya.
These sorts of insights often get stifled by the busyness and distractions of every day life. A doctor who expressed concern seeing a lot of severe burnout among his colleagues closed the retreat with a comment about the pandemic also bringing a gift to slow things down.
And when I opened email after I got home, I saw this message from Matt Kahn, author of Whatever Arises, Love That: Personal growth is only a means of improvement when seeing how miraculously you are able to grow when improving the way you care, treat, and speak to yourself. From this space, personal growth is a choice that only love can embrace.
It seems New Hope was the perfect way to describe this retreat…. Namaste’
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