Blue Jays & Birch Trees
This cancer treatment, hormone therapy, tamoxifen, has me feeling kind of flat. A decade(s)-long meditation practice can have the same effect, but this feels more like depression than equanimity. It’s no fun feeling uninspired, unmotivated, sad, and irritable. Certain things help. Meditation helps. Connecting with people for any reason. Helping someone. Someone helping me. The PSW was just here. She is so kind and blows through the house like a gentle breeze taking care of things that for me are a struggle. They pile up otherwise. The PSWs have all been angels to be grateful for.
Photo by Laura Chisholm Smith
Getting outside helps — which I might not do if those tasks weren’t already done. It helps to give the animals attention. Rios and the three cats never tire of affection! A friend I know from the oh-so-beautiful Haliburton Highlands sends me pictures from her outdoor adventures. She has a good eye and is drawn to subject matter that’s often something I would have also been drawn to. There’s really fantastic colour in the latest ones she sent me. Taken when Laura is out the water, they bring me back to canoeing or kayaking. Being on the lake is like nothing else.
Some combination of these things provided enough motivation to get outside this morning. A gorgeous fall day. Right?! These days feel like such gifts whether raking the leaves or reclining in a gravity chair. I started cutting back the gardens, leaving the flowering things for the remaining pollinators. (Reclining came later!) I was reminded of a painting I made years ago. It’s picturing a time I spent at the Dharma Centre of Canada in September 2010. The DCC’s white temple and dagoba are set amid stands of of birch trees that, at the time, were brilliant yellow; stark deep green pines punched through the leaves. There were blue jays everywhere punctuating the air with their vibrant colour and sharp call. It’s an early painting and flawed, but it reminds me of that time — my first retreat there — an invaluable and unforgettable experience. My first experiences of samadhi were at that retreat.
The mind goes up and down and every-which-way. And there is also an aspect of the mind that always stays still. We are all probably very familiar with “every-which-way” mind! And have probably all experienced steady mind whether you mediate or not. I saw these two aspects together at once. Mind activity was witnessed from a steady place like one of those midway games where one aims at plastic ducks that glide along as though on a stream. Thoughts became just some things floating by. We had silently been following the breath for a few days, so that there was suddenly enough steady awareness to see this stream of mind-objects — that one can pick up or not! Or we could think of it like a parade: the elaborate floats and marching bands arrive and pass on, unless you hop on for a ride or run alongside.
The Awareness, I felt, was like sitting cross-legged on a stool. At first the stool is unsteady because it has only one leg and when a thought grabs the attention, the stool tilts wildly. After many years, the stool grows more legs and Awareness doesn’t get pulled off balance so easily. It opens wide to infinite potential and yet is free of habitual reaction to whatever arises in it. The stool, eventually, disappears completely. In the painting above, I depicted this potential as energy in a sheltered spot that was connected to me. And that's how I felt — like I was cultivating something. But the energy is the background of being, the true nature of all things, and isn't either inside or outside of us. It's just here, all the time.
I recently started attending a meditation course led by a good friend and a wonderful teacher, Carolynn Barko called Beyond the Conditioned Mind. And that’s it. Beyond the conditioned mind we find a pure essence that is right here. We've only had one class so far and what a difference it makes for me right now. We begin by watching the conditioned mind until we learn or remember to let go into the space that conditioning papers over. There is ample conditioning with which to practice letting go!
Birch trees begin as reddish brown saplings. The papery white bark doesn’t start to appear until the tree has a diameter of two or so inches. It's a great analogy for conditioning that is necessary for our minds to develop and for our sense of self to develop into a sturdy tree. Then at some point it becomes essential to look at all the layers of conditioning and begin to let them fall away. True essence seems buried under layers and layers of papered conditions. Peeling them away too soon can leave pink and tender flesh. But at some point the papery layers begin falling away of their own accord, a natural process of growth. Birch trees also have knots in them that resemble eyes. I've painted them that way, the universe watching us, watching itself.
Our house now is surrounded by birch trees. Their chalky, white, papery bark is such a unique part of the changing environment. Singular in one way, and also given to changing drastically with the light. Hidden in summer by the leaves and hidden by winter in the whiteness, shining brilliantly in direct sun, and warmly in the sunrise or sunset. Right now, their leaves are still kind of green, but surrounded by brilliant yellow and orange maples. All the leaves shake in the breeze, like gentle rainfall. It can sound like the ocean here when the wind really picks up. Blue jays make their home in the trees here all summer, but they get very noisy in the fall. Roof-lines and railings around the house serve as perches for them. The young ones have such perfect feathers and squeaky voices. Ravens are also calling and playing on the wind. I haven’t seen a turkey vulture sailing overhead for a few days. I wonder if they’ve gone south? About 100 sandhill cranes are gathering in a farm field not far from here. Most of the geese seem to be gone by now. Our back deck is up pretty high and when a small group of low-flying geese flew overhead once, the sounds of their wing beats and honking were so close I felt like I could reach up and touch them.
It’s not unrelated that I heard an interview with Dustin Hoffman yesterday on Mayim Bialik‘s podcast, Breakdown. What he had to say about his acting process was fascinating. Especially from a perspective of meditation, Buddhism, and the self. Mr. Hoffman had so many interesting things to say about inhabiting the role of the character (he would put the word “character” in air quotes). He talked about learning the physical and mental characteristics for the role and then letting the action unfold from that place. Not trying to act like the character and rather be the character. Trying to act felt like interfering with the natural authenticity and dynamism. It reminded me so much of the layers of conditioning that we learn and put on and act from. When the actor is done her job, all she needs to do is leave the role behind and step into life as it is. All we need is right here. Step out of conditioning, habit, and reaction that interfere and interrupt the flow. Step into intimacy with Life that unfolds in its own natural course.
Mr. Hoffman said something else interesting. That he felt most at home when he was acting. I don’t know, but perhaps this is because he was trusting the process, and not trying to interfere. Whereas in the usual human habitual controlling sense of self there is agitation and struggle. That was my mind this morning, spinning out stories of weight gain, de-conditioning, deteriorating strength, and hopelessness. But what Life wanted was to get up, make the bed, fold some laundry, look in the sweet faces of the animals, accept hugs and support from Michael, get outside and see what calls to me out there. And, poof! (after a few weeks dry spell), here is a blog. Well, not exactly — I’ve done some editing. But I dictated it into my phone as I reclined in the gravity chair (told ya that would happen) in my porch. The porch that Michael built that I’m so grateful for. I spent so much time out there while recovering this summer.
I dictated: “I see so much of the sky here. The blue jays are calling. A turkey vulture did just fly over — magnificent!” Life is actually pretty simple and so much better than the stories the mind spins out to cover it up.
~
Dustin Hoffman on Mayim Bialik’s podcast, Breakdown. Inspiring, moving, funny, and fun.
