Growing Zen

This is a sort of continuation on the last entry, The Zen of Disease, but mostly an insight I had just now in meditation. Let me set the scene (you'll get the pun in a second):

I just got a lead role in one of our local theatre's shows, The Three Musketeers by Ken Ludwig. I have an amazing part (Sabine!). I'm so stoked to do it, I can't even tell you. Auditioning was a huge obstacle and personal triumph for me (and I had so much fun, that was miraculous), and then I actually got a part. I haven't done any kind of drama since high school (mmmm, 8-10 years ago) and even then it wasn't at this level, so I'm rusty and I've never done this before. I was feeling lost and totally inadequate. And rehearsals just started yesterday. Oh, and I lost my voice yesterday, which I think is the major cause of my current malaise. So, voiceless, I was feeling even smaller, lost-er, and pretty darn disabled (which is saying a lot, considering I have scars in my brain, ya dig?) because I can't even say my lines while I'm trying to keep straight with stage right and stage left (it's really not that hard, there's just a lot going on).

Aaaaanyways...I was feeling really frustrated, angry, and depressed. (You try taking care of a 3.5 year old and 18 month old all day long by yourself without being able to talk. Oh, and then the 3.5 year old goes and hides at JCPenney and you're running everywhere huffing his name and trying to ask people if they've seen him and no one can understand a freaking word you're saying, even though you're yelling at the top of your lungs...but I digress. Oh, second digression: being voiceless has always been the major theme of my worst nightmares. That and cockroaches.) Anyway, I thought, "How lame. Yeah, not having a voice sucks, but I know about impermanence. It won't last forever. I just am really angry with my body for not being well and functional." And then I remembered I just wrote that post about finding joy even when your body sucks. So I knew I'd lost my zen. I went and meditated on impermanence and equanimity. Here's the article I read before meditating, it is perfection: Equanimity and Mindfulness. You really should read the whole thing, it's not that long, but the basic point is to learn how to recognize, observe, and detach yourself from painful, negative emotions. You don't have to change or eliminate them, because that's impossible. They'll always be there. But you can look at them like cars in an endless stream of traffic and simply acknowledge them without climbing into them or slashing their tires, or busting out their windows, or keying them, or trying to set them on fire. Fighting against what is happening to you is what brings suffering. Acknowledging with gentleness allows the transitory emotion or thought to pass peacefully.

So I gave myself a little love: I gave all of my emotions hugs and let them go on their way. (Yes, I realize that makes me sound neurotic, but it's a basic mindfulness tenet. Don't knock it til you try it ;) ) Then I turned to my vocal chords and my body in general and showed them some lovingkindness. I mean, my poor body, to be so screwed up and then have me hating on it for not being perfect. Getting mad at it isn't going to fix it. That's hard on my body and makes me miserable. The best way to do it is to show patience and gentleness and compassion for my body. Positive feelings and improved health are a beautiful cycle. And if I'm not being so pissed off at my body, I can obviously, actually relax, accept, and be happy. (Well, relax as much as I can while I'm kind of worried I might lose my part if I don't heal fast. I'm drinking licorice tea with honey and sucking garlic like a fiend over here.)

Then I started to close my meditation with my lovingkindness verse:
"May I be happy."
And then I stopped. I do want to be happy. Everyone does. And, just like being pissed off at my body, being all stressed out and hard on myself at rehearsals does not make me happy. I had the insight that I need to practice mindfulness, to recognize, observe, and appreciate each moment. Because that's how you're happy: when you realize that the moment that you're in is essentially your entire life (because, remember, the current moment is the only one in which you can act), and when you want to be happy, you'll focus on what to do in that moment that will make you happy. I absolutely want to be at rehearsals. I absolutely want to work hard and do an amazing show. It's my longest life-long dream. If live that desire for happiness moment by moment, focusing on the present moment and realizing how much there is to be happy about, I will be. So, may I be happy :)

"Insight is an experience of the truth that cannot be simply given to another person in the way that one may communicate ideas or beliefs/ Insight is spontaneous and has the nature of a gift. It is surprising when it comes and yet obvious. It is joyful yet calm. The mastic tradition practices a form of spiritual reading (lecto divina as Saint Benedict called it), which is not the same as study or analytic reading and which is dedicated to the progressive awakening of insight in the practitioner. Like the Jewish tradition of reading the Bible, quality is preferred to quantity, depth to breadth. Reading in this way, one chooses a short passage and then continues to ruminate or "chew" over it. You go back over it many times, homing in more and more until you are left with a single word or short phrase, simultaneously arresting and awakening the mind to meaning. In this way, as the mind is stilled, one is brought to the threshold of meditation.

How to Read the Word

Origen, a third-century Christian teacher in the Alexandrian school of Christian philosophy, was the first to systematically describe the art of reading and interpreting Scripture as well as the first to describe how the mind's encounter with the Scriptures lifts the mind above itself. He identified the different levels of meaning (an exercise that was anathema to fundamentalists then as it is now) waiting to be experienced in the Scriptures.

He saw the reading of Holy Scriptures as a process of deepening consciousness and insight. The process begins with the literal meaning of the text, a meaning that requires both a sense of grammar and of history. But, beyond the "letter that killeth," which goes no further than its surface meaning, Origen pushed on toward the level of moral meaning. This level is reached by seeing the stories and characters of Scripture as "types" or symbols that teach us lessons within the context of our personal or social circumstances. The, Origen said, the "allegorical" or mystical meaning waits to be discovered as we are lifted above ourselves and absorbed into the Logos itself [Logos is the Spirit of Christ]. A good example of how this process works can be seen by exploring the different levels of meaning in the Bible term "Jerusalem": the word, the place, and the symbol. Jerusalem has a literal historical meaning. As the center of sacred presence and worship for three religions, it symbolizes the spiritual realities of the pilgrimage of our lives. As the "heavenly Jerusalem" it represents the goal of the spiritual journey."

-page 26-27 of the introduction to the Dalai Lama's The Good Heart: A Buddhist Perspective on the Teachings of Jesus. The intro was written by Laurence Freeman, OSB.