Sunday, January 07, 2007

Featured Book: The Sanity We Are Born With


The late Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche was a prolific writer and speaker. He viewed Buddhism for the West as a psychological affair, and I am reading his collection of essays on psychology and for psychologists. It is interesting that he choose this explicit secular approach to disseminate his "religion" in the West. Perhaps because of the intellectual atmosphere of Boulder Colorado, or perhaps due to an understanding of Americans at this time in the 1970s, he led with psychology. As one of the preeminent teachers of Buddhism in the West, he may have guessed right. To purchase this book on Amazon, click on the link below.

The Sanity We Are Born With: A Buddhist Approach to Psychology

Thursday, January 04, 2007

Cleomi


Today, 4 January 2006 is the 2nd anniverssary of Cleomi's death. I am including the text from the acknowledgements page from the website, written shortly after her passing. The busyness of my days often interferes with my ongoing grief around this loss. In quiet moments, I will catch a glimpse of a photograph and I'll feel her presence. I'll remember her passing, how she shuddered as her heart gave way and the flaccid weight of her body as I draped her across her my shoulder.
"My beloved dog Cleomi inspired the vision of this site, and hence the its orginal launch name of cleomi.com. Cleomi's beauty and grace seemed a fitting symbol for the content I wish to represent on this site. In a very direct sense, my relationship with this animal, who is "3 genes away from being human" (according to one dog expert who knows her well), has taught me much about compassion, patience, and love - all key ingredients for being a human being and a psychotherapist. At around 7 pm on the evening of 4 January 2004 my beloved Cleomi left the world. She developed lymphoma 18 months before this and had her spleen removed. She had a rich and robust life since that diagnosis, climbing mountains, circumambulating Indian Brook Reservoir and Colchester Pond, and going on secret daylong adventures with her brother Ruki. About a month ago, she started growing weak and losing weight. She was severely anemic, due to the development of leukemia. She went quickly and at home. She was 10 years young this past May. She has enjoyed lounging at home with Ruki, her tireless and faithful companion, who seems lost in her absence. I am heartened to know she lived an exceptional life, spending her first few years on the track as Speedo Gena, and then spending most of the rest of her hours off-leash, running and loving life. She swam in the ocean, Lake Champlain, Colchester Pond, and Indian Brook Reservoir; she climbed Camel’s Hump, Mt. Hunger, Mt. Mansfield, and Mt. Laraway. She was a social leader among her peers, and a general goofball. She was gentle, loving, and intelligent."

Cleomi received Exquisite Care over the years from the wonderful people at the See Spot Run Kennel in Jeffersonville, Vermont. You may contact Tracie for more information at dogkeep@sover.net. For more information about adopting a greyhound you may visit the National Greyhound Adoption Program, or The Adopt-A-Greyhound Project.

Tuesday, January 02, 2007

No Excuses

If I were to pick a motto for the New Year, I elect “no excuses.” This is the year I write my book, no excuses. My second cousin, Michael Chorost wrote his memoir “Rebuilt: How Becoming Part Computer Made Me More Human” in 2005. This heartfelt and compelling story, chronicles his journey from a person with a hearing disability to total deafness to the world of cochlear implants. He discusses with great candor and cogency the implications of cochlear implantation that include the fact that he is now a cyborg, and the effect that cochlear implants will have on the signing community. On a personal note, I read the book with great alacrity waiting to see if I was referenced in any of his childhood memories. No luck. In fact, he barely mentioned his sister and brother. From his website, I delight in the fact that his book has been very successful. It has already come out in a paperback edition and it has been translated in into several languages, including Japanese. Just recently, the book received the PEN award in the creative nonfiction category. Enjoying his success is known as mudita – sympathetic joy, or rejoicing in the happiness of others. At the same time, it is challenging that he has soared ahead with this book project and I have managed to let mine languish for over 4 years. My book that incorporates mindfulness with our tendency to be hard on ourselves, has been mostly written since May of 2002. Yikes! It has gone through a number of revisions in my head. And I made one serious attempt to put these revisions on paper the summer before last. The demands of practice and my new teaching responsibilities at the University of Vermont have served as “excuses” to completing the book. No longer. There are many things that have lied just out of reach. Not actually out of reach, but out of the willingness of my grasp. So, stay tuned for excerpts from the book, coming soon.

Monday, January 01, 2007

The New Year at Shao Shan

If you read my blog entry from last year, you saw my mild contempt for the New Year Holiday. Why? If we endeavor to be mindful and live in the now, then everyday is both special and the same. This year, however, I have embraced the New Year celebration. I celebrated in Japanese Zen style at the Shao Shan Temple with Roshi Taihaku presiding. A small group gathered for a meditation and reflection ceremony. Think about the past year, what went right, what didn’t, and try to connect to the affect of when things were going right. Right down what you want to let go of and what you want to move towards. So, we all wrote and then took our slips of paper to the alter and offered them while the group chanted “gate, gate, paragate, parasamgate, bodhisvhaha” After everyone had offered the intentions at the alter, we took them outside and placed them in the fire. This was followed by a new year feast. For a few adventurous souls, meditation continued until 10:13 p.m. at which time a meditation on time commenced. With the 108 minutes remaining until midnight we sat in a circle, each with a different bell. At the top of each minute the time keeper rang his or her bell, and everyone followed suit. At midnight all the bells rang, and we stood around the fire breathing in the new year. This was followed by more feasting on the traditional soba noodles and tempura.

The evening revolved around ritual and ceremony. What Taihaku explained so eloquently is how the ritual heps us to relate to our own experience. So it is not about the external happenings, but how these happenings open us to ourselves and help us to remember the moment and the intentions we create in it. For me, this new year is a reaffirmation of the value and place of meditation in my life. I told Taihaku that I’ve been a beginner now for over 23 years. In this time of transition for me, I placing formal practice at the top of my priorities. Everything else will flow from this.