Thoughts

Thought is crooked
because it can invent anything
and see things that are not there.
It can perform the most extraordinary tricks,
therefore it cannot be depended upon.


-Krishnamurti

Mukti

What is then worth having?
Mukti, freedom

-Swami Vivekananda

Walking the Walk

I just watched video of thousands of Iranians protesting the election results in Iran. I applaud the brave Iranians who are risking their lives to make their voices heard on the streets of Tehran.

Cats Really Do Meditate

I’ve decided that cats know how to meditate. They are totally in the “now.” They’re not thinking about tomorrow, or the next day, or their five-, ten- or twenty-year plans.

When a cat is focused on something, their laser like concentration is something to be wondered at. A cat somehow manages to sleep and be completely alert at the same time, but they are always in that state of the present moment that is so elusive to us human beings.

When you’re around a cat, you also temporarily go into that Zen state with them and enter their world of bliss. Want to learn how to meditate? Spend a lot of time with your cat and you’ll discover all you need to know.

Going to the Squirrels?

We have an ongoing problem with squirrels as do most people in our neighborhood. Whenever we fill up the bird feeder, the resident squirrel makes his appearance shortly thereafter and performs all kind of acrobatic stunts to try to get at the birdseed. I've seen him hanging upside down, hanging on to the bird feeder and swinging with it like a rodent version of Tarzan and engaging in many more Cirque Du Soleil-like feats. This morning I was really not in the mood for his antics so I took a little red (soft rubber) ball that my sister had bought for my niece when they were visiting a few years ago and threw it at the squirrel, while yelling and gesturing. I'm sure I made a pretty sight in my blue bathrobe.

In the process of doing so, I suddenly realized that Callie, my mom's cat had disappeared and in a moment of panic I thought she had left the premises. I blame the squirrel for ruining what could have been a peaceful morning, but according to a video of Pema Chodron that I recently saw on You Tube titled Troublemakers, people or things who make life difficult for you are actually good for you. The way I interpreted her lecture is that they help you to get a "birds eye" view of yourself that, while not always pleasant, can be enlightening.

p.s. One positive note: I saw a beautiful red cardinal and a black and white woodpecker briefly appear after shooing the squirrel away.

Sychronicity?

I recently stumbled across a book called The Best Buddhist Writing 2007 edited by Melvin McLeod. What's interesting is that I was actually searching the online library catalog for Robert Wagner's memoir Pieces of My Heart. I had heard him discussing his book on Charlie Rose and, being a lover of old Hollywood memoirs, I thought it sounded intriguing.

If you believe in synchronicity, The Best Buddhist Writing appeared right under the search result for Robert Wagner's book, which was, according to the results, on the shelf on the fourth floor of the library. I briefly glanced at the title of the Buddhism book and thought, I should read that book sometime. Well as luck would have it, I got to the library and couldn't find the Wagner book even with the librarian's assistance. She said some books just go missing in action sometimes and I said rather cheekily, "Does that mean one of the other librarians is reading it?" and she said, "Oh no. We check out books just like you do. It could have been misshelved, or be lying on a table somewhere." So I digress, but suffice it to say, we didn't find the book so she put it on hold for me if and when it does turn up.

Well of course I didn't want to leave the library empty handed so I decided to find the Buddhism book and I did. Recently, I've been having a hard time falling asleep; a couple of nights ago, I started thumbing through the book and discovered an essay by Pema Chodron, the Buddhist nun who narrates two CDs (When Things Fall Apart) that my oldest sister in CO sent me a few years back when I was going through a particularly trying time. I started thinking, hmm this is interesting and read her essay finding it even more enlightening than the CDs had been, because she explained certain Buddhist concepts in more detail. Then I found an essay by a woman who had eloped at 16 to marry Pema Chodron's spiritual teacher, the highly regarded Tibetan Lama, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche. I remembered Chodron discussing Rinpoche's teaching on the CDs, including his detailed instructions for meditation.

I found myself reading more essays that helped me to better understand some of the questions that I've had about Buddhism over the years. A brief caveat: I realize that Buddhism is a ancient religion that scholars and practitioners study for years. In no way, can reading a book teach all you need to know about Buddhism; I have barely scratched the surface, but I am always searching for answers and knowledge about topics that interest me and these essays were comforting to read as well as enlightening.

I also really liked an essay called Our True Home by Thich Nat Hanh. I've included a passage here:

Did you know you had a true home? This question touches everybody. Even if you have the feeling that you don't belong to any land, to any country, to any geographical spot, to any cultural heritage, or to any particular ethnic group, you have a true home...your true home is the here and now. It is not limited by time, space, nationality or race. Your true home is not an abstract idea. It is something you can touch and live in every moment. With mindfulness and concentration, the energies of the Buddha, you can find your true home in the full relaxation of your mind and body in the present moment. No one can take it away from you. Other people can occupy your country, they can even put you in prison, but they cannot take away your true home and your freedom.

Carpe Diem!

Death is extraordinarily like life,
when we know how to live.
You cannot live without dying.
You cannot live if you do not die
psychologically each minute.

-Krishmamurti

In Azar Nafisi's memoir Things I've Been Silent About she opens up her past to us; we meet her parents and see how their hopes, aspirations, disappointments and frustrations have left an indelible imprint on her life. Since finishing the book a couple of days ago, I keep thinking about this particular passage she wrote about her father, a former mayor of Tehran who was jailed during the Shah's regime on alleged charges that were never proved:

In personal life as in politics you either accept the rules or you openly and on principle rebel against them. In both cases, there is a price to be paid. Fortunately, no one goes free. But what price? Not belonging to either camp, my father paid a double price. He had neither the comforts of convention nor the satisfaction that comes from breaking with what is expected of you. All through his diaries two opposite tendencies come up: the desire to break way, to embark on the life he wanted, coupled with the fear of what could happen to him if he did.

I'm not sure if I understand yet why this passage continues to haunt me, but it carries a sadness and poignancy with it that possibly reminds me of my own father and his ambivalencies that he struggled with thoroughout his life.

Another passage that really stayed with me is this one:

Those who are close to us, when they die, divide our world. There is the world of the living, which we finally, in one way or another, succumb to, and then there is the domain of the dead that, like an imaginary friend (or foe) or a secret concubine, constantly beckons, reminding us of our loss. What is memory, but a ghost that lurks at the corners of the mind, interrupting our normal course of life, disrupting our sleep in order to remind us of some acute pain or pleasure, something silenced or ignored? We miss not only their presence, or how they felt about us, but ultimately how they allowed us to feel about ourselves or them.

Reading this memoir has really touched my heart in an unexpected way.

Bread Rising

I did it! I made bread that actually turned out today. Let's hope that's a good omen:)

The Art of Baking Bread that Rises :)

I am on a quest to make the perfect loaf of bread. At this point I’d settle for a loaf of bread that rises even half way. For the past couple of years, I’ve been unable to bake bread that rises. At least once a month, I try once again to make a loaf of bread that actually looks the way a loaf of bread should and not something halfway between Irish soda bread and a flattened pancake. It seems that somewhere along the way during the past few years, I’ve lost the ability to make the perfect loaf of bread.

I measure out the floor, heat the milk and butter in the pan to very warm as advised in mom’s yellow Pillsbury recipe book with the yellowed pages held in somewhat tenuously by the metal binder. I mix the milk and butter into the flour mixture and stir until the lumps disappear. I add enough flour to make a stiff dough, turning it out to knead the dough on a floured surface. As I knead the dough, I think maybe this time will be the charm. I’m going to knead it as long as I can until I get tired of kneading.

I never thought of myself as a very good cook, but I was always a pretty good baker. My mother taught us all how to bake at a young age. We learned how to bake pies, bread, cookies and other fun treats like no-bake chocolate peanutbutter cookies. I used to make Swedish tea rings that actually looked like the pictures in the recipe books, lemon meringue pies, and, of course, cinnamon bread with cinnamon swirls and some raisins if I was feeling generous.

I hear that my Grandmother on my mother’s side was a very good cook. She was a professional cook before she met and married my Grandfather, a minister from Switzerland; so I believe cooking might be in my genes.

In my mind, my inability to bake a loaf of bread that rises coincides with events that happened almost three years ago when I lost my beloved cats, Snowball and Bambi, in an apartment fire, and, after 17 years of living on my own, came home to help my mother take care of my father who was in the end stages of Alzheimer’s.

So I’ve decided that if I can learn to make the perfect loaf of bread again, or at least one that rises, I will somehow recapture what I’ve lost—that spirit of joie de vivre, or that sense that life is full of possibility and that I am somehow lucky and that things will eventually work out for me.

After the fire, I questioned my choices. Why I had continued to freelance and lead a somewhat financially precarious existence? It seemed that I prided myself on getting a project just in time to pay the rent and the utilities and I felt lucky that my landlord barely raised the rent in the 13 years I lived there. What I chose to ignore at the time was that in the last few years I kept myself in a state of perpetual anxiety about my finances.

Maybe this was somewhat familiar to me after all the moving around we did as children. It seemed that stability was a foreign notion to me. Yes I’d lived in the same apartment for 13 years, but I somehow managed to recreate the sense of uncertainty that lingered from a childhood of never knowing how long we were going to stay somewhere, or when we would have to say goodbye to our friends yet again. Don’t get me wrong; I didn’t feel deprived. I remember thinking it was somewhat exciting to always be moving on and starting over yet again.

Back to choices. After I came home that early Spring day and found my apartment a smoke filled place that looked as though a bomb had hit it and with the fireman’s help, found Snowball curled up in the corner of my bedroom in a lifeless ball of fur (I couldn’t even bear to even look at Bambi), life seemed to change forever to before and after—before the fire and after the fire.

I wonder now—if I had led a more stable existence, maybe I would have been able to buy a condo and live somewhere that was perhaps safer, or where a fire was less likely to sweep through a building from the basement to the third floor in the space of fifteen minutes, as the fire captain told me later. It took firemen from three stations to control the fire. By the time I returned home after running errands, my life was irrevocably changed.

The time has gone off. My bread has risen and is ready to be shaped into loaves. Maybe this time will be the charm.

Deep Thoughts :)

I was doing my Yoga this morning and started thinking that last year at this time I was at the Sivananda ashram in Kerala India. It's hard to believe that a year has gone by. So much has happened. My trip started out being all about me and trying to "find" myself in a way. What I found was that the world out there is so big and complex and that's so much more interesting than me.

There were times when I loved being at the ashram and times when I felt like I couldn't stand another minute. I wanted to take a hot shower, use a toilet with a flush handle :) and wash my clothes in a washing machine instead of by hand. Everyone else seemed so acclimated to the food, the lack of amenities and, for the first time in my life, I felt kind of spoiled. I remember meditating early in the morning at Shiva hall with the rest of the ashram and hearing the lions roaring in the nearby wildlife preserve and thinking, "one day you're going to remember all of this fondly."

When I finally left the ashram and went to the lodge in Trivandrum, I was so thrilled to have my own room, bathroom, access to the Internet on a daily basis and television. Even the phone that allowed me to make international calls seemed enchanting. Everything is relative as they say because when I got to the hotel in New Delhi and I realized I could take a hot shower for the first time in two weeks, I took such a long shower that I flooded the bathroom. I then proceeded to order ice cream, pizza, samosas, and breakfast in the a.m. via room service.

I was somewhat overwhelmed by Delhi both times I was there. It was crowded, noisy, and unlike any place I've ever been. The day I had scheduled to go around the city with a driver, I suddenly felt like I was coming down with a bug and kept running to the bathroom. I wasn't sure I'd be able to go on the tour. I did my yoga asanas that I'd learned at the ashram along with the breathing exercises and I told myself "you can't wimp out. You may never have this opportunity to see Delhi again." And I had a wonderful day.

What struck me during my time in India is how everyone was so curious about the U.S. Whether it was a temple guide, an Irish dorm mate, the driver who took me around Delhi--they all wanted to talk about the U.S. In the process, I found my identity shifting from that of just "me" to an American in the world. I'd noticed this before when I traveled abroad, but never more so than on this last trip. No matter how much we choose to view ourselves as individuals traveling alone in the world, we are also citizens of the world and the countries we come from. When I saw the footage of people all over the world celebrating Obama being sworn in as President of the U.S., once again that really was driven home for me.

Ode to a Renaissance Man

Since I can’t afford to travel as much as I’d like to, another form of travel for me is reading a good book that takes me into another world or time. I’m a sucker for autobiographies and memoirs by Hollywood stars, particularly from “old Hollywood.” I’m especially fascinated by memoirs—what people remember about their lives and choose to reveal to the reader—the good, the bad, the mundane, the fascinating. People like Kate Hepburn, Kirk Douglas, Sidney Poitier have all written compelling memoirs that I really enjoyed reading.

I’m always curious to see if there was a “road not taken” or a key decision they did or didn’t make that somehow impacted the trajectory of their lives as we so often like to think. What seems to often be the case is that these people were destined for their path of stardom as though fame perched on their shoulder and hung on for dear life. Sidney Poitier turned down roles that he found demeaning even when he was poor as a church mouse. Katherine Hepburn defied stereotypes and lived her life as she saw fit way long before feminism had taken hold in the 70's. That’s not to say they didn’t go through hard or challenging times, but what I find is that most of these “stars” somehow managed to stay true to themselves in spite of whatever challenges and opportunities came their way.

Most recently, I started reading Christopher Plummer’s memoir In Spite of Myself. He of The Sound of Music that he affectionately refers to in the book as S&M. I’ve had a crush on Christopher Plummer since I first saw that movie at age five and I have seen it at least 15 or 20 times since. I knew that Plummer was a serious stage actor who cut his teeth in stage productions of the great Shakespearean roles prior to signing on to the role of the captain in the Sound of Music. At this point in his life, he seems to have come to terms with his participation in this movie and says he finally understands why the movie is so beloved to millions worldwide.

Reading Plummer’s book is like taking a rollicking ride through the heyday of stage and cinema up to the present time. He gives us the back story to the stage productions and films he starred in, including the Sound of Music. Sadly, it shattered any illusions I might have had that he and Julie Andrews were romantically involved during the filming of the movie (the cast stayed in different hotels for the filming of the movie in Austria).

In his prime, Plummer palled around with Jason Robards, Jr. and other bad boys of Hollywood and had more than his share of romantic liaisons with women, which certainly isn’t surprising; I have always thought he is one of the best looking men to ever appear on the silver screen. Plummer’s great love of literature and wordplay comes through in his descriptions of how he tackled a particular role. He also sprinkles whimsical poems of his own and others throughout the text.

I was interested to learn that Plummer comes from distinguished lineage in Canada. His great grandfather was one of the first prime ministers of Canada; another ancestor was one of the founders of McGill University. His parents divorced when he was very young and his mother had to return to work in reduced circumstances. Plummer seems to have spent much of his life trying to distance himself from his elite gene pool.

If you’re looking for some introspection or soul searching, it doesn’t come until he meets the love of his life, Elaine (his third wife). He writes of her on page 464“Her appearance instantly broke a recurring dream that had plagued me most of my life but which now made complete sense. In it, I am the incubus fighting my way through bile and slime; something incredibly heavy is pushing down upon my face. I can breathe no longer, I’m suffocating, life is slipping away. Then far above a light begins to shine through and with one terrifying heave I am released. Some kind of nocturnal monster has retched and spewed what’s left of me out into the brilliant sunlight and like some beached flounder I land with a joyous slap onto the warm and welcoming white sands. Another temporary reprieve? No! This time I had been truly spared.”