The Busyness of Suffering
Hello Friend.
Thank you for taking the time to be here today and to tend to your breath. Today I was listening to a talk by Brother Phap Huu of Plum Village. He was talking about how he found himself burning out in last year. A monk, burning out? Well, I was intrigued because here I am, often exhausted, faltering in practice, slipping into poor diet and health habits again, and all around feeling like I am functioning on a deficit. Of course, I was chalking it up to my own failures because that is the practice I have had for a long time; shame. But if a venerated monk and abbot of a monastery can suffer from burnout, I might not be an anomaly of failure!
And, of course, I am not.
The brother spoke of how he discovered his busy mind/busy body to be the vehicle that was taking him outside of himself in his practice. Yes! I do this too! Maybe you do as well?
It did not become clear for me until I had an encounter with an actual vehicle that my understanding of my busyness is the vehicle where my consciousness rides. I was driving to the meditation hall this morning, and moving at a slower pace than normal for me. I was quite enjoying this small rebellion against the gods of ‘not enough’ when I was passed by a fast-moving truck. That is it. No negative exchange. No honking or swerving. Just another person driving a truck on their way somewhere, moving faster than I am. I felt the ping of my training into machismo ding like Pavlov’s dinner bell. “What a maniac!” Just a moment, nothing that overtook my composure, but enough of a thought that I was invited to inspect what it means to have a busy mind/busy body. I was busy with concerns about that person. I was more present in their mindset, in their intention, in their purpose (of which I know none of these things and cannot) than I was in my own enjoyment of moving slowly. This is busy mind.
So I breathed. And I sensed the breath. And I knew I was breathing. And I was back in the slowness of my vehicle, both my body and my car. Thank you practice.
Appalachian Elegy 45
bell hooks
barren broken hill
once a place of possibility
now only remnants
old glory gone
heritage sullied with hate
ancestors indigenous and dark
held captive
by soldiers and greed
by bloody conquest
battlefields where the dead live
unclaimed not mourned
histories buried forgotten
lost to a world of cover-ups
ghosts return to these hills
to grieve
cry out lamentations
mourning the desecration
of earthbound bodies
ghosts gather here
make promises
of resurrection and return
Oh, this poet! bell hooks reminds us time and again that there is not outside that is not inside. To be of a place and in a place is the same thing. Today she reminded me that I am full of ghosts. Thank you poet!
All In Love,
Michael
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