Buttercupchappati Chronicles

a new one

Two thousand and eleven, a year well launched with friends and family, laughter, dancing, singing, momo's, Texas chili, margaritas and The Rocky Horror Picture Show on dvd.

I suspect the horror part was all of us doing the time warp some time around midnight, but anyway...

It was cozy - and that is one of my main words for this coming year. I want to snuggle in and read, study, work, create, be myself; with occasional outings for travel where I do all that, just in a different place.

Key words for 2011:

reflection

meditation

mantra

reading

study

music - really listening, not just playing in the background

healing - myself and my patients

art

writing

solitude

gratitude

poetry

a dharma year
a catching up year
a year where I return to Amdo - always!
a year where I say hello to myself, everyday

well - resolution comes from resolve, so let's just see.
Intention is everything, I tell everyone else that! Best listen to my own awesome advice.

Happy new year everyone!
Peaceful, safe, prosperous and brilliant.

three years, three months, three weeks and three days

I have just had an interesting experience.

I was offered the chance to do a three year retreat in India. This is the standing goal of many dharma students. To take yourself out of the temporal world with all its distractions and meditate for three years, under the guidance and instruction of a teacher.

I did not hesitate.

I refused.

As the words were coming out of my mouth, I was shocked, but knew I was hearing a truth.

The first thing that I thought was, no, that's too long to be away from my Tibetan Medicine practice, it's too many people I would not be able to help. And in that moment I knew I have taken into myself as an un-shakeable belief that compassion in action is my path. Our great Master of TTM, Yuthok Yonten Gonpo said that when faced with a choice of doing your practice or helping someone, help, because that is your practice.

This probably doesn't seem like a big thing to anyone else, and you might be scratching your head or yawning and wondering why I bothered to share.

For me however, it's huge. I know on an instinctive level that the choices I have made over the last few years, the work, the study, the conviction that I was not fooling myself into a dead end, are all right for me. Because I did not stop even for a micro second when I said no. It was like someone else's voice leaving my body and telling my truth.

But it was  my voice, and I am so very happy to have heard it at last.

 

running on the spot

it doesn't take you anywhere! 

A busy week, but don't ask me what I've been doing because it feels like I've been staring at walls and out of windows. Quiet week in the clinic which is always dangerous because I am so bad at being bored.

What's that? I could study, well yes I could and when Dr Nida is back in April asking questions in class I will be wishing I had studied instead of day-dreaming. 

Or I could go watch Buffy instead.

Back in Melbourne this weekend, two TTM get-togethers, one on Saturday with the new Ku Nye students and one on Sunday with the TTM girls. I am looking forward to both so I don't really mind being back in the city for two days.

Trungpa Rinpoche always said the cure for boredom is to meditate or do your practice. Well he was the example of everything that boring and bored is NOT. Un-enlightened, non-crazy wisdom me finds it really hard to sit well when I am in that state of mind. This weeks mantra has been "love your practice, love your practice, love your practice", fired up the meditation students with it too. 

They got it. 

Am I loving my practice? Not enough.

Not even loving love this week, no poetry to share. Picked up Rumi,  put him down, same for Donne, Hafiz, Lorca, Wyatt, even my beautiful my beloved Neruda is hiding the love from me this week. e.e.cummings might as well be written in Greek.

And there is something else that is making me nuts... language.  How hard is it to find a teacher for Tibetan language, I mean really! I feel like this quest is just about up there with the Holy Grail. I calculate I've been looking for a Tibetan language teacher for a good four years now. I keep asking around, hoping, driving miles and miles up and down the highway to classes that vanish while I am in transit. Or someone who was teaching is now in India, well lucky bloody them! If I don't connect with someone soon, the part of my brain that does language will be dried up and look like a goji berry! 

Maybe I should take up LL's offer of her house in Mcleodganj and go and do the three month course at the library. And be done with it.

The pressure is quite real because when I do my internship (as part of the TTM course) at the Tibetan Medicine Hospital in Xining, no translators are provided. So a bit more than hello and thank you is going to be needed. 

At the very least I am going to need "where is the nearest alcoholic beverage" I'm sure!

Walking meditation

I always forget how good walking meditation is until I teach it to the current group of students. We all totter and stumble about as we deconstruct the act of taking a step to slow it right down and move mindfully. Someone will fall over, often its me. 

We walk without thinking about it, so when you have to stop and really be in the process it's like - oh no, how do I do this again?

But there is a very satisfying aspect to this practice. I find men often prefer it to just sitting on a cushion, more kinetic I guess. Movement is dynamic and many people new to meditation assume it is a passive activity just to sit and watch your breath. (Nothing at all like the reality. Easy to learn, hard to master is what I tell all new students.) Breath is life, how can it be passive?

Walking meditation is great for those times when you have "monkey mind" - a highly technical meditation term for too many thoughts!  It works inside or outside, although finding a quiet, beautiful place to do your walking meditation in nature is always a bonus. As is the entertainment you will give your family and neighbours as they watch you take 10 minutes to go to the end of your drive and get the mail.

walking meditation, Plum Village style

Take some tips from the experts, and don't forget to breathe.

Tuesday - time to write up tomorrows meditation class

It's my teaching meditation really, I spend some quiet time thinking about what we will cover in this weeks lesson and then I dive into the books and seek help from the masters.

There are two in particular who I rely on and am so grateful for, Sogyal Rinpoche and Thich Nhat Hanh.

Sogyal Rinpoche is a master of communicating with western minds. He is warm, funny, generous, lucid and extraordinarily powerful. His intellect is unerring, combine that with his ability to read a room and even a public talk can become an amazing teaching that speaks to the heart of you. His book The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying should be taught to our children at school.

Thich Nhat Hanh has the most exquisite style of writing, and although I have never had the opportunity to sit before him - one day! - his compassion and pure spirit streams from every written page, every photograph. The Miracle of Mindfulness is a book I always buy when I see second hand copies because I am always giving it away to people. It is on my desert island library list for sure.

Of course, the plan can go all to the wind if I have a sudden influx of new students or someone has a question or a problem arising from their weeks practice. 

And that's okay too!

To meditate does not mean to fight with a problem.

To meditate means to observe.

Your smile proves it.

It proves that you are being gentle with yourself, 

that the sun of awareness is shining in you, 

that you have control of your situation.

You are yourself,

and you have acquired some peace.

Thich Nhat Hanh

Meditation and more

As a person who practices and teaches meditation I am always looking out for inspiration and resources to add to my knowledge.

How has this site escaped my attention for so long?

http://meditation.org.au/

I am so impressed. There are on-line classes - audio or written, you choose. There are email meditation tools, forums, groups, stacks of information, things to download. Just wonderful, and so much work has gone into this web site. 

It gets better, and I think this may be the bargain of the year. For a tiny $10 (AUD) you can become a life member and gain access to even more stuff, cd quality audio files to download are just one example. I was so happy to have found them and so amazed at what they have created, I felt that 10 bucks was the least I could do.

It's not way out "space cadet" stuff, it's not flogging one particular faith or religion. It is just a great meditation resource dedicated to helping people find a little peace and tranquility in their daily lives. I also think it would be a great motivator for those who really struggle to commit to that time on a regular basis; turn your computer into a meditation coach, why not?

Going to light a candle

I'm going to buy a huge candle today and tonight when the first star comes out, light it. I am not Jewish and cannot participate in Hanukah, but this is the time of year when the light returns to the world for all of us.

I've been talking about this to the meditation classes for the last two weeks. It kept popping into my head, and nothing stays there for long before moving to my mouth!

So many light festivals around this time of year. Hanukah, Diwalli, Christmas, Solstice, bound to be more that I don't know about.  But as the year turns and we in Australia have our longest days, I am liking the idea of my candle keeping the light going through the coming nights, a vigil of two thoughts: let the old go, burn away; and bring in the new, shinning my little light to guide the new in.

Maybe Jesus does want me for a sunbeam...

Dr. Nida is back in town!

My teacher of Tibetan Medicine arrived in the wee small hours yesterday. Dr. Nida has been teaching in Singapore and now is with us for two weeks, yay!

A few of his students had lunch with him yesterday after a well deserved sleep in on his part. This year it is really very bitter sweet to see him. Last time we were together was in Tibet last year, and so many of his family live there I was almost afraid to ask how they all are. Thankfully they are all fine, although he says things are very bad in Kokonor where we helped with the hospital. I want to try and ring them this week while I have Dr. Nida here to translate for me.

I think there is no doubt that while we are on our seven day retreat later this week, all our prayers and mantras will be dedicated to the people of Tibet and a compassionate solution to this terrible terrible situation.

beautiful meditation, beautiful rain

We have all noticed how it seems to rain on meditation night, the whole class is on to it now.
No-one is complaining. What was potentially a dreadful dangerous bushfire summer, has actually been not too hot with reasonable and well-timed rain.

What a pleasure and a joy to teach these ladies meditation. I am not being sexist, we have no men students - yet! They are so diligent, so grateful, and each week they really get it a little bit more.

Love it!

and another thing

Very small class for meditation tonight, only one, but you know, I really don't mind.

It is always interesting to teach a class of one. I know many teachers won't do it, and for some things you do need the dynamic of a few people. I have tend to think that one person must really need it and go ahead with the class anyway. These are the classes that really teach you as the teacher, and often something very profound is exchanged.

As tonights class proved. We had a wonderful meditation, the shared energy was extraordinary. It is such a privilege to be part of this when it happens.

Of course winter in our little mountain town is a problem. Everyone hibernates. They will do "virtual" meditation - they talk about doing it so much that they think they are. We have virtual yoga too!

And if anyone was wondering, the lavender quartz and the amethyst enjoyed the session as much as we did.

Sceptics?

Get over it.