At a meditation retreat years ago, I experienced some resolution of unacknowledged grief around my mother’s death. I grew up knowing my mother was dead, but there was always a sense of secrecy and shame about it. Things like suicide are kept from children. Everyone around me knew this secret. It was strange way to grow up. On the other hand, death isn’t a big scary thing for me; it’s a familiar one.

I’ve been going through an intense period of medical treatment and emergencies. In hindsight, it’s been quite a string of what one might call bad luck. But I've been able to hold gratitude, humility, and curiosity through most of it. It’s been a great opportunity to learn more about myself and this weird existence. Some unexpected triggers for these lessons have been song lyrics — popping into my head vividly, loudly, or persistently. Usually, these “ear-worms“ are just the mind on its hamster wheel of constant thinking. Now and then, though, it feels to me like something is surfacing, as though the subconscious is relaying a message. From the depths, wisdom uses whatever tools are at hand to get through to us.

I feel such compassion for the person I was then and what she went through. But I learned a lot about myself in those years. Like how much I already felt irrationally fearful going into benign situations like the bank or a retail store. I was able to shed that fear because the real possibility of making a smelly mess in public brought it to the forefront. That old fear was based on feeling unwelcome/unwanted wherever I went. What a relief to let that go! I also learned a unique kind of bravery — to go out and do things regardless of a serious stigma in society. This kind of bravery has helped with the MS too — moving very slowly is perfectly okay with me while the rest of the world is busy speeding up.

Chickadees make their two-note call more often in spring. So much so that even in the midst of a cold winter, when I hear that dee-do, the milder days of March come to mind. The smell of snow melting. Warm breezes. The first colourful heads of flowers that poke up in places even while patches of snow remain in cool places.

My post today is about gratitude and as I wrote it, a really spectacular photograph came to mind. One that evoked gratitude in me. It was passed around social media feeds in 2021 and it likely will resurface to get passed around again because it resonates with some deep truth. (This is why we still watch shakespearean plays and listen to Mozart.) It’s an image of a bird singing in the morning light on a cool day. Simple. Commonplace. But the temperature, the light, and the timing of the photographer coalesced to capture the brief cloud that the singing bird’s warm breath made in the cold air. You might have seen it! And doesn’t it evoke a shock of realization: a bird’s breath fogs in the air the same way mine and yours does when it’s cold.

Not I, not mine, not myself, just elements, said the Buddha to his son.

Once when I was on retreat there was a woman, let’s call her Liza, who was not like the other retreatants. She smoked cigarettes, swore, challenged the teachers, snuck food into the temple, and had a generally caustic attitude. She was secretive and defensive about some of these behaviours; I saw and heard them because we were in neighbouring rooms. I wondered even why she was there as she seemed to have little interest in diving deep into contemplation or meditation practice. Yet, she was there. And I could identify with her comings and goings, her searching for happiness in the quick fixes. I used to be like her, if a little less abrasive. I still am to some degree; old habits are persistent!

I used to reread the Narnia series regularly because it is uplifting and something in those stories fed my appetite for the mystery. On the theme of rereading books, has anyone else read and reread Rohinton Mistry’s novel, A Fine Balance? It’s a beautiful and terrifying story. The descriptions of life in the slums of India in the ’70s and of the trials of those in the untouchable caste are hellish. One character, Maneck, is set in relatively nourishing circumstances yet has a troubling possessive smallness that stains his view of the world. When he is engaged with friends in the city and sees the extent of their suffering it leaves him feeling helpless and hopeless. Even so, his tragic end made no sense to me the first two times I read the novel…

But in that moment, there was only sound and it was like a symphony. No me, no trees, no wind, no names, or exclamations. The painting is Untitled because there is no name for that experience, really. The Buddhists call it emptiness, other faiths might call it God. But to name it limits it. Interestingly, in Buddhism and in the Tao, this deep wisdom, this infinite source, is feminine.

Tall skinny pine tree-tops stood in silhouette against the illuminated thin clouds — like minute hands pointing to noon on a clock. I was moving slowly. So slowly that each time I rounded the dagoba, the sun was in a new position relative to the tree tops. Which really meant that the earth was rotating relative to the sun and it felt oddly linked to my walking. Both grand and minuscule motions were rotating in harmony as I walked and each time I came around to find the earth had moved a little further. I felt light and grounded and part of the whole clockwork of the universe.