Nature

I was crashing through the underbrush of the internet yesterday when I came upon a video of Ajahn Chah, a Buddhist monk from Thailand who studied in the Forest Tradition. One of the things he spoke of in the video was harmony with nature, which struck me as being especially apropos as we begin to reach the heart of winter here in the Midwest.

As someone who hates cold, wet, icy, and otherwise unpleasant weather conditions... winter can feel a bit difficult sometimes. It tests my patience and tries my mood. It saps my color and ratchets up the tension in my shoulders and neck. This is particularly true now as my body attempts to reacclimate to temperatures a good twenty to thirty degrees below my winter experience of the last four years.

Chah's message about nature led me to thinking about the expectations I place upon myself and the resulting tension, disappointment, and/or anger I feel when I have "fallen short." This week, I noticed this pattern seems to become heightened in the winter... my lethargy increases, and my frustration at myself mounts because I am not doing enough.

But winter is all about slowing down. When we look to nature for a clue as to how to respond to the elements around us, we see increased sleep, a slower pace, and a greater sense of patience as life curls up around itself and calmly waits for the cold to pass.

Rather than fight my tiredness or rage against my body's failure to keep up with the tempo of summer, perhaps it is wiser to listen to the messages of my joints and head: Lie down. Be still. Stop rushing. Let go. Practice acceptance.

Rather than steep myself in guilt and berate the cravings of my stomach, perhaps it would be more useful to listen to the message from my gut: Eat more vegetables. Drink warm fluids. Don't underfeed yourself. Practice mindful eating.

And, rather than labeling myself a "bad mother," "terrible housewife," or "lazy, old good-for-nuthin," maybe I should take a lesson from the life around me: Prioritize the things that really need to get done. Focus on people, not things. Slow down and be patient; this too shall pass.

Mind you, I'm not suggesting I heard Ajahn Chah's message and decided it meant I could be sleepy, fat, and lazy. But I do think there is honesty in all three because each is anchored in a natural reaction to the order of things and the world around me in this moment. Each is an authentic response to life. And so, in moderation and with mindful awareness, each contains the possibility of a true expression of my Buddha nature within the context of winter.

Sleepy. Fat. Lazy.
Restful. Hearty. Calm.

May you embrace the lessons of the season. May you find harmony with the natural world and enjoy peace.

Focus

For some reason, I am periodically hit by phases of blurriness. Not so much visually - though acuity is sometimes an issue due to changing prescriptions and whatnot. Not... this is more of an emotional and mental haziness. A kind of soupy, pokey, obscurity that seeps into my everyday living until it feels like my pores are inhabited by an ethereal and intangible sludge.

Being a bit of a control freak by nature, these states of foggy personhood tend to unnerve me. I start to panic when my mind won't focus clearly or my memory shows signs of serious deterioration. Anxiety overtakes me when I feel less alert... when my usual, wakeful and sharp sense of awareness becomes replaced by what feels like someone else's sluggish and all-too-lazy brain.

Perhaps it's a biological holdover of some kind, brought on by snowy winter weather and a primordial desire to fall into a dreamy, warm sleep - letting the ice and wind talk itself into spring. Maybe it's some emotional stuckness linked to the affective quicksand of February - a month predicated on the notion that time really can feel infinite while life subsists in a sort of dark, interminable stasis.

Whatever the reason... today I have decided to reframe my relationship to this lack of focus. Heretofore rattled by such a mental shift, I have decided instead to embrace the loopy-ness. My agitation, I would guess, stems from an attachment to my (erroneously) perceived sense of in control and my inability to allow multiple definitions or styles of focus.

My little "i" self says: Hazy is not okay. Foggy is right out. Down with blurry wishing. Out, out with forgetting and dropping and missing and mistaking! Distraction is failure.

And today big "I" glanced up from its peacefulness, laughed a little and said, But why? Why assign the label of failure to a natural and uncontrollable state? Why worry so much? Why punish yourself? Who are you failing? What have you truly forgotten? Fog and clarity: they are ultimately one.

Sometimes the beautiful balance of life hits me, and I am humbled by the innate paradox of complexity and simplicity contained in even the smallest of moments. There is peaceful being made possible when I no longer impose a hierarchical categorization to the many-ness that may be. In other words... my tendency to order, to label, to assign along a spectrum and wield some internal pendulum of judgment actually limits my experience by cutting me off to the possibility that any point along whatever aspect of duality I travel is no more good than it is bad. It just is.

And so today I am hazy. My mind feels like the turtle in Aesop's fable, and my heart feels thick. Life is moving at a slower pace right now - or at least, my experience of it remains snail-like and deliberate. Maybe for good reason.

May you allow yourself to slow down when needed. May you embrace whatever pace you now travel without judgment or self-recrimination.