Gratitude

Monday, 07 December 2009 14:34 Written by Lezlie Laws

. . . to  two dear friends.

I’m returning to The Wise Heart this morning, after a month-long hiatus from it.  I’ve missed it. This morning I read the first half of Ch. 23, Kornfield’s description of the Middle Way.  And once again, I enjoy the remarkable experience of thinking that the universe has constructed experience specifically for my benefit. This reading could not have been more perfect for me at this moment in my life.

So first, before I summarize what he has said—for summarize is about the most that can be done, since what is says is so pure, so clear, so devoid of ornament, leaving nothing to do for those of us who depend on mere interpretation to get us through life—I have to speak directly to the two of you.  I want to express my deep gratitude to both of you for your friendship and especially for the support and wisdom you have shared with me in the last two weeks.  From both of you, I have received wisdom, compassion, and love that the Buddhist principles exhort us to embrace.  From both of you I have received comfort.  With both of you, I feel safe and cared for.  This is a gift beyond the capacity of my humble words to express.  But please know, as I read this chapter this chilly, rainy morning, and really felt the enormous insights it holds, I thought of both of you with every sentence.  I thank you from the bottom of my pitiful little heart for your presence in my life.

So, right off the bat (again) Kornfield speaks directly to me with the quotation from Sutta Nipata:

At one time I had wanted to find someplace where I could take shelter, but I never saw any such place.  There is nothing in this world that is solid at base and not a part of it that is changeless.

I should restrict my comments to just this single quotation, for it is the heart of so much misguided thinking in our world.  I am certainly a victim of the belief that shelter can be found, firm footing is around the corner, permanent comfort is at hand.  In fact, I could probably trace most actions of my life to this belief.  I have worked and studied and controlled and striven in virtually every arena of my life to find solid ground.  To arrive.  To feel successful or secure or happy or worthy or lovely or even just OK.  All of these actions some form of attachment or aversion.  Most of these actions relying on controlling or changing things on the outside in such a way that I gain comfort, albeit temporary.  Push and pull.  Drive and stop.  Grasp and let go. Be still, take action.  Speak, be silent.  I have volleyed back and forth between various forms of anxiety and ecstasy.

     The middle way, of course, cautions against such behavior, suggests there is a space, a point of being, where we “come to rest between the play of opposites” (368).  Kornfield says, “Learning to rest in the middle way requires trust in life itself” (368). 

      Just now, I’m reading the works of Jon Katz who writes beautiful of this challenge in Running to the Mountain.  He describes his own struggle to seek solitude and spiritual growth and simultaneously reside in the world of family, bookstores and pizza palors.   His is thoughtful and sometimes hilarious personal journey that revolved around buying a rustic cabin in upstate New York and trying to be in the world but not of it.  Thinking he was going to have scads of time and energy for the creative life, he finds himself overwhelmed with maintaining decent living conditions on his mountaintop.  Chaos reigned for months. 

     I can identify.  Thinking I was in clear, open, white space, ISo now, I’m faced with a large personal challenge that seems an annoying deterrence from the work I had planned to do at this point in my sabbatical, in my life.  My health issues put me at the brink of distress, of disunity.  My body is acting oblivious to my own natural good will for myself.  Ha.  And here comes Kornfield saying be “open to the way things are . . . learn to embrace tension, paradox, change . . . instead of seeking resolution” (369).

    So what to do?  Faced with a circumstance over which I would love to assert control, to find quick resolution, I am forced to recognize the middle way and find well-being right where I am. The relentless “fixer” has to stand down.  What a practice.

Kornfield concludes this section on the middle way by say that we can “bring fearlessness and trust to any circumstances” (373).  I know this moment in my life is an opportunity to really get this lesson.  But I also know that I can trust that I don’t have to get the lesson alone.  You have both said this to me.  I have fellow-students right by my side, comforting me, guiding me, encouraging me, and teaching me.