Needing a bit of solitude now?

Oh, yes. Yes, a little down time, a little "you time," a little quiet after the delightful (or perhaps, not so, depending on the circumstances of one's life) holiday gatherings and doings and comings and goings.

I've stolen what's in quotes below from the Tricycle newsletter - and the link at the bottom will take you to quite a few more words of wisdom:

"Weekly Teaching: The Power of Solitude
Sometimes, after a big gathering with lots of family, friends, and excitement, we just want to be alone. And Buddhism, particularly Tibetan Buddhism, emphasizes the importance of solitude in practice. And there are tangible, immediate benefits to going on retreat, to being alone:

You can look at retreat as a practice to develop compassion for other people. When you know how to relax into that deeper sense of yourself, you can be there for people in a way that you never could before, in a way that is not driven by your ambition and habitual patterns but rather where you see what other people really need. You see their experience from their side. You are actually able to get outside of yourself. Far from being an antisocial practice, retreat practice frees you to love people in a uniquely powerful way."

http://www.tricycle.com/interview/power-solitude

Desire? Desire!!!!!!

What do you desire? Does the act of desiring feel wonderful - or does it frustrate you?
If and when you obtain your heart's desire, are you then happy? Joyful? Ecstatic? Euphoric?

What about how desire plays out in our addictions - to food, to alcohol, to drugs legal and illegal, to sex, to running, to work, to perfectionism????

In the interview found by clicking the link below, Mark Epstein offers up some tempting tidbits about his thoughts on desire, more fully contained in his latest book. Click and learn!

http://www.tricycle.com/special-section/merry-go-round-desire

bogged blogger

Sometimes the blogger is just more boggy than bloggy, and sadly - or maybe more accurately - just a function of the normality of the changeability of life - that has been the case for the past week or so.

Where did the boggy come from? Oh, let's see - I suspect part of it can be laid at the feet of the holiday season and the range of emotions it conjures up - from joy and gratitude and awe to poignant memories and sadness and loneliness - lonely for those I loved who are no longer living, loneliness for that someone I'd like to love who hasn't shown up just yet.

And there's the existential angst thing that is never far away, that seems to grow a bit more prominent during cold, stay indoors, wind down the year kind of days.

And there's the overwhelm that sometimes shows up when there are lots of new things on the agenda - like learning some of the pertinent points of blogging and AdSense and Google partners, of wandering helpless through the maze of Medicaid filing as part of a psychology practice, of meeting new folks while out and about more than usual for holiday gatherings.

So today was a wind-down, be quiet sort of day, with a bit of catching up with myself, with a larger bit of reality check with a friend, with a nicer, softer spot to land this evening.

Hope, always, honestly, truly does - spring eternal. Sometimes I just have to actually open the window to let it in.

Doing December

So, it's December 7 today, one solid week into the month that holds Christmas and Hanukkah and Kwanzaa and the winter solstice and how many other causes for celebration and socializing whose names I don't know or perhaps have never heard of....
How are you doing with all of this?

I have, for so many years, loved Christmas and its trappings. I loved thinking about the gifts I'd give people I loved, maybe even making some of them some years (there WAS the year of decoupage, when everybody got some picture shellacked onto a piece of wood); I loved stockings - my own and the ones I filled for other people; I loved tying pretty bows on boxes wrapped in pretty paper; I loved party food - eating it and cooking it; I loved party drinks (the Scarlett O'Hara, made of Southern Comfort, cranberry juice, and an egg white shaken into fluffy froth looks like the holidays in a glass; too many of them will make your head feel decidedly less festive the following day); I loved being with friends and family; I loved real green cedar trees, shiny magnolia leaves, nandina berries (later holly; it was just nandina that grew in our yard).

I do still love all those things, even though they're not all part of my Christmas experience any more. I pick and choose; I do what works in whatever year I'm living, in whatever circumstance I'm living through.

And that thought - living through circumstances during the holiday season - is the point of all this rambling.

What ARE your circumstances this year? How lovely it would be if all of us really could waltz through our holidays totally wrapped in bliss, totally merry....

What is closer to the truth is that most of us navigate this season with some "circumstance" impinging on our ability to experience bliss, to exude merriness....

Here's a bit of what I know about that, right now, today, without even trying hard. Tomorrow will be the12th anniversary of the day my father shot himself and died from the wound. It is also the second anniversary of the funeral of the mother of my best friend; Sarah died on December 5. Today was the eighth anniversary of the suicide of the husband of a dear friend of mine. Just two days before Thanksgiving this year, a man in my neighborhood put a gun in his mouth and ended his life. I have another friend who lost her beloved father to illness in October, and she's wondering how long that loss is going to hurt.

Everywhere, I can see, and so can you, people who are struggling financially just to take care of the basics, and for so many of those people, the desire to do "extra" and "special" during the holidays is more of a stressor than a cause for celebration. In my town right now, it's colder than usual, and I don't think my heat pump has stopped running all day. I'm thankful I've GOT one; I bet I could throw a rock and hit at least one house where people are suffering without an adequate heat source.

So, I'm wondering: what's going on with you? How are you coping? What do you do to honestly contact the things that hurt, that make you sad, and still move forward in a way that DOES allow you to celebrate this time of year, to feel joy at all the things that are right in your life, to express honest gratitude for all the good things? Because most of have our ways, some of us are looking for new ways, and all of us have a piece of this story to share.

Here's your invitation. Talk to me.

How useful is YOUR mind?

OK, up there in the links section - you know, that part that you aren't paying attention to because it doesn't look sexy and doesn't have little thumbnails or nifty pictures? Anyway, up there is the link to Tricycle. Nope, not the little 3-wheeled bike you rode as a kid, but instead, a wisdom-filled website that will, if you sign up for them, deliver nuggets like the one below to your email inbox every day.

Today's offering was especially good. Titled "Umbrella Mind," it's written by Gerry Shishin Wick in his "Dharma Discourse."

Now, read and ponder - and oh, what a great idea – maybe implement?

UMBRELLA MIND

Zen Master Dogen said that “not knowing is the most intimate thing.” Not knowing means to be open to all eventualities, to not prejudge a person or situation. If your mind is full of preconceived notions, there is no room for an unbiased view. It is like when your hands are full of objects, you cannot pick up anything new. A closed mind causes separation and suspicion. Like an umbrella, a mind is only useful when it is open. The first step toward maintaining an open mind is to understand the nature of mind or self.

-Gerry Shishin Wick, "Dharma Discourse"

'Tis the season to eat everything you see

Yes, we do, don't we? All those goodies, all those office parties, neighborhood get-togethers, holiday dinners - oh, my! It's all so yummy - and so full of calories and butter and loads of other temptations.
And we'll soon be wearing the evidence around our middles and on our hips...
It doesn't really have to be that way - and not just at the holidays, but all the rest of the year, we don't really have to have an unhealthy relationship with food.
Click the link below and read some of the wisdom of Jan Chozen Bays to learn more about loving your food and inviting it to love you back.

http://www.tricycle.com/-food/mindful-eating?offer=dharma

Some of the reasons why meditation can do so much good!

There are a lot of really smart heavy hitters chiming in at this roundtable. Jon Kabat-Zinn was one of the first to really start "getting it" that meditation gives each of us so much power to move ourselves into a better life, to start teaching us that we don't have to be at the mercy of those things that we think we can't stop thinking about - you know, the ones that we think are going to drive us crazy! Read on...

http://www.tricycle.com/feature/roundtable-meeting-minds

Share your illumination

 These are words of wisdom from Master Sheng Yen, from "Rich Generosity."

"When a candle is lit in a dark room, it illuminates the room to some extent, but its power is limited. But if you use the same candle to light another candle, the total brightness increases. If you continue to do this, you can fill the room with brilliant illumination. The idea of transferring merit to others is like this. If we keep our own light selfishly hidden, it will only provide a limited amount of illumination. But when we share our light with others, we do not diminish our own light. Rather, we increase the amount of light available to all. Therefore, when others light our candle, we issue forth light. When out of gratitude we use our candle to light other people’s candles, the whole room gets brighter. This is why we transfer merit to others. This kind of light is continuous and inexhaustible."