Mapping The Heart

Heartwood 24"x12"

I am mapping something these days. Every painting that emerges resembles a map of sorts. There is a strangeness to it all as if I have become a cartographer, an explorer recording and etching out the roads and river of some landscape that seems important to me. But perhaps every true creative experience feels like this?

I have come following an unknown river with a paintbrush and some pencils. Little continents and landforms appear, rising and sinking into oceans of grey and white, and taupe. Perhaps I have taken up membership in some strange society of cartographers of the heart. Surely my fees in this club are overdue?

The rivers and roads arise from the wandering of sharp tools across the painted surface, small, fierce nomadic creatures, exploring the terrain. The scraping nomads need to be held loosely, with love and trust, so they can trace out their own trail because they know best. The marks that emerge have their own lives. I must let go to bring them into being. These lines remind me that we are never in control anyway. It is merely our human delusion.

And the landforms that emerge are pleasingly irregular, tracing coastlines of the wandering mind, lakes of deep thought, rivers of delight, oceans of sadness.

Geography of the Heart 16"x16"

The webs of crevices and cracks tell stories about the beauty of imperfection. Tracing tiny lines I am reminded that the richness of the world is revealed to me when I attend to the details of life. The crows feet of the land spread out to show it's smiling face.

And while some of the work is done by attending to detail. I need to move outward and view the work from my space capsule. I am reminded that everything is composed of both attention to detail and an ability to stand back and see the big picture.

Road Trip 16"x16"

My map making project went on retreat this past weekend, spending time with master cartographer of the heart and mind, James Baraz. We spent the weekend practicing paying kind attention to being present. I learned that breaths are like snowflakes, no two are the same. I will offer you two tiny pearls from my expedition. If Joseph Conrad wrote "Heart of Darkness", I think James Baraz wrote "Heart of Lightness".

 Ram Dass said: The secret of contentment is to plumb the depths of the moment.

James told of some insights he had reciting the following phrase while on retreat. He said it to himself but then also envisioned other people. He said the really tough one was thinking of his son and saying this: "You are the heir to your karma. My happiness depends on my actions not on my wishes.

Islands of the Heart 8"x10"

Suffering & Forgiveness

Last night I had a call from my brother who had just spoken with my mother on the phone.  He wanted a little help in sorting out the cryptic messages my mother was doling out to him.  We are such strangely interesting creatures, us humans.  At 7 o'clock when I spoke to her, my mother seemed fine, even cheerful.  When my brother talked to her 2 hours later he experienced her as extremely low and depressed and understood that the doctor was discontinuing meds because her cancer had progressed to a point where this seemed the best choice.  (Neither of these things are exactly true.)

My brother and I had a heartfelt  chat and agreed that really our intentions were to be helpful to my mother and that consisted of being supportive and truthful (not necessarily nice, if that makes sense) and hopefully engage in some sincere communication with her.   He felt the same sense of sadness about her choice that I had experienced the night before  and that was somehow strangely comforting to me and made me feel connected to him.  In the end he could understand that at 94, she might be tired of her life and feel like she'd had enough and if she wanted to actively pursue leaving the world that we should honour that choice.

All this got me thinking today about suffering and forgiveness.  Today I took a break from "my mother" and went out to the country.  It was a slightly mild Spring day that even offered a little lick of sunshine.  We drove through some lovely pastoral farmland and  stopped at a Fair trade farm that makes their own chocolate.  We sampled one that had salt and maple syrup and alderwood smoke, one with lime and coconut, another with enough chipotle pepper  to send me into a coughing fit.  I finally chose one to buy, with the most heavenly taste of vanilla, cacao nibs and rose essence.  In case you're wondering what this has to do with the Dharma, let's call it skillful means.  Sometimes you need a break from your suffering.  If it is possible, sometimes you need a little "shelter from the storm" as Bob Dylan would say,  to rebuild your energy so you can stay balanced and deal with the stressors in your life.  It is not running away or avoiding I don't think, when it is undertaken with some mindfulness.  And so we drove and wandered and walked, shared a little rice and kale with miso sauce and some dosas and dahl in a lovely little community market cafe.

Someone mentioned "forgiveness" in their comments the other night .  And that got me thinking about it.  What do you think the opposite of forgiveness is?  My first answer would probably be to "hold a grudge" but I suspect anger is

perhaps the hotter, more intense opposite.  But how do we forgive someone  if the forgiveness doesn't naturally arise?  Are there things we can do to cultivate this forgiveness?  Notes from James Baraz's "Awakening Joy" course I took last year say, "True forgiveness is based on understanding why people act unskillfully. ... According to the Dalai Lama, an essential component of compassion is realizing that the other person's words and actions are not about you, but about their internal reality, which has intersected with yours." 

 Baraz also mentions a couple of other points regarding forgiveness which seem helpful to keep in mind.  "Forgiveness is what frees up energy and allows our hearts to open to life and greater well-being."   He also reminds us, "If you find yourself contracted, disconnected and suffering because you're caught up in anger, forgiveness may be your main practice to awaken joy."   And I think it is also helpful to remember, "If you're not yet ready to forgive someone, then forgive yourself for being just where you are, particularly if you judge yourself for feeling the way you do.  We can't hurry up the process.  Sometimes hurt take a while to heal."

So forgive me if I've gone on too long.  You will feel energized by forgiving me!  (See what a service I have done.)  And if you haven't gathered anything else here, you might be happy to have discovered that chocolate is definitely an aspect of  of skillful means!  Bon appetit.

The Attitude of Gratitude

The morning started with the sound of rain pelting against the bedroom windows.  It was still dark and the predicted  weather for the week was coming in on cue, rain, rain and more rain.  The early ferry from Vancouver was cancelled due to high winds.  Seemed good to pull the covers up a little higher and snuggle in for a few more minutes. 

But by the time I opened the curtains it was a different world.  The sun was shining and the streets drying.  So after a long, cold winter there was something in the morning that called us out to play.  And we were not disappointed.

It was with real gratitude that we walked along the ocean path in the wind free, sun drenched morning, feeling gratitude for the simple pleasure of a pleasant walk on a warm day.  No hat required, no chin down facing into the wind.  Nothing special, nothing dramatic, just a nice day and the good fortune to live somewhere safe and beautiful and to have a body that could participate in a walk.  It seemed apparent that many dogs and their humans were also feeling grateful for the day (do  dogs feel gratitude?)

Ah gratitude. .... In this case gratitude was inspired by outer circumstances, the awareness and acknowledgement of something pleasant .  But it is possible to meet the same day with a grumble, that it's about time the weather changed , that until now it has been so crummy and yada, yada, yada.  So what is gratitude?  It seems like a feeling that arises.  It might be in response to outer circumstances, the weather, someone, something of beauty, some experience or place but I think it can just arise in us, just as a recognition, a general gratefulness for what is.  Perhaps some people are more inclined toward gratitude, the same way as some people see the glass half full?

I would say that I was not born with the  gratitude spoon in my mouth and it has only been through the refining of my practice that I have come to realize the importance of cultivating gratitude.  Last year I felt called to take James Baraz's course  "Awakening Joy" and focus on the positive aspects of practice.  One of these was gratitude.  During the course one of the speakers talked about "the attitude of gratitude".  Other speakers talked about practices that incline the mind toward gratitude.  We can't force gratitude but we can cultivate it.  One suggestion was a gratitude journal, where you write at the end of each day about the things you felt grateful for.  Another woman spoke of a practice where she sends a short email to a friend each evening and names 5 things she was grateful for each day.  She talked about how this caused her to be scanning her environment during the day for things that made her grateful and in this way she oriented herself  toward gratitude and in turn built and strengthened the gratitude muscle.

So what did I feel grateful for today?   I was reminded of gratitude by the warmth of the first Springlike day, the fact that I could at my own free will go out for a walk, then putter some in the garden, gratitude for living somewhere so beautiful, gratitude for the friendly clerk in the hardware store, a call from a friend I haven't heard from in a while.  And how about you?  Can you find 5 things you felt truly grateful for today?

It Doesn't Matter What You Do

My daughter, who is in her late '20's is trying to decide what to do next with her life.  (Aren't we all in some way?)  And I have come to realize that my role as a parent doesn't lie in telling her what to do, but in helping her find new and helpful ways to think about her life.  Sometimes when it seems appropriate I make a little offering.  

The other day I was reading some material from an online Buddhist course I took last year called "Awakening Joy".  A little piece made me think of her.  It was written by the Spirit Rock Buddhist teacher, James Baraz and went like this "When I was younger I faced a crossroads in my life... I didn't know what to do and was afraid of making the wrong decision.  I went to a wise psychic, Reverend Miller...($5 a reading!).  He said that although he wouldn't tell me what to do he did have one piece of advice: it doesn't matter.  My initial response was, "What do you mean it doesn't matter?!   That's my life you're talking about!"  He told me that as long as I was paralyzed with fear over making the wrong decision the benevolent forces of life... couldn't help me along in my journey."  

The full quote I sent my daughter was a bit longer than this but basically it speaks to the issues of faith and movement. We do the best we can and then have faith.  We can't, with our little minds figure it out, no matter how hard we try.  At some point we have to give up that sense of control and take the leap.  It is so easy to be paralyzed by fear and indecision.  I have spent many years living in that little dark house myself so I am well acquainted with it's cobwebbed corners.  And yet only we can open that door and walk out.  I can only knock on her proverbial door and suggest that the weather outside is really quite nice.  

At some point we must draw on our courage.  And I have come to realize that a big part of practice is having courage, to take a step, to say something in a situation where I might normally opt for comfort and quiet.  There is such momentum and energy (chi as traditional Chinese medicine calls it) in taking a step, moving out of the stagnation, the sleepy comfort of inaction that many of us spend our lives in.  We can do it in small ways or big ways and as we do we build new and wholesome habitual tendencies.  We eek out new neural pathways in our brain and ultimately we become a little bit more alive.  We experience the richness of life.  So as I sent off my email I realized as I so often do, that what I was thinking about and saying were things that I needed to hear myself.

In December in the spirit of doing something different and moving the energy, I hosted my first open house/art sale.  I got to see, first hand, how moving a little energy  built on itself.  I found that things that had formerly seemed like a big deal could be done with a light touch and  a "let's see what happens" attitude.  As a result several  pieces of my art work found their way to the e Art Gallery of Greater Victoria's  Christmas show and another few pieces made the trip to another small gallery.  So here's to moving some energy.  And with the beginning of the lunar new year, what better time to rededicate ourselves to this task!