Breathing fast and slow

Firm ground is not available ground.   --AR Ammons "Dunes"   When Tomin Harada returned home to Hiroshima from where he had been fighting in Taiwan at the end of World War 2, he found nothing to greet him. No family. No friends. No ruins of any sort to indicate that Hiroshima once existed, and that once upon a time Harada had a life there. Instead of leaving, Harada stayed and became a doctor and participated in Hiroshima's rise, literally, from the ashes. He dedicated his life to restoring human dignity to the survivors of the atomic bomb. Throughout his career, he watched more than 3,000 of his patients die. In the midst of so much death, Harada decided that he needed to cultivate beauty and fill his small corner of the world with it. So, he grew roses.When he died in 1999 at the age of 87, Dr. Harada's Hiroshima roses had been sent to peace activists and citizens in the United States, China, Germany and other parts of the world. At the time of hi...

Instructions for living a life: Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.  --Mary Oliver Fact: At higher elevations, the Earth's atmosphere becomes thinner. Compared to the air at sea level, the air at altitude is less dense, which means that all of the atmospheric gases--like oxygen--are more spread out. The body's tissues need oxygen to aid with performance. This is what makes hiking at altitude a breath practice. Truth: "We breathe, and wildness comes in. We don't control it." Jack Turner, Exum Mountain Guide and author Early in the planning stages of my hike up Mount Whitney, one of the women I had invited along asked me if I wanted to attend a Mount Whitney training workshop she had discovered on Facebook. Politely, I declined, explaining to my friend that I wanted to retain some of the mystery of the late summer adventure we were planning. In other words, I was not interested in having all of the answers. At best, they would merely approx...

And, therefore, let the immeasurable come. Let the unknowable touch the buckle of my spine. Let the wind turn in the trees, and the mystery hidden in dirt swing through the air.                 from "Little Summer Poem Touching the Subject of Faith" by Mary Oliver As a single woman, I could not sit still, which I recognized as a problem. At the same time, I was drawn to solitary ventures like writing and snapping pictures, or reading and watching people as I savored every last drop from a cup of coffee. For many years, I vacillated between movement and reverie. I ran the trails and streets, and occasionally the high school track, of my beach-side community. Luckily, my 500 square feet of home was in a canyon. The setting forced upon me an intimacy with the grand scale of the universe and, sometimes, in the smallest of things. From time to time, I understood that the universe would patiently reveal its ...

At night some understand what the grass says. The grass knows a word or two. It is not much. It repeats the same word Again and again, but not too loudly... from "Evening" by Charles Simic During my student years, which, really I must confess, persist after all this time, I made paper by collecting weeds from the sides of the roads. Although they did not look like weeds to me, but tall slender grasses toasted to a golden wheat color by the sun, delicately, and on all sides, like the way a good baker rotates her baking sheets when her wares are in the oven so that the golden coat is even. It was summer and hot and the grasses were sentries that stood between the highway gravel and that other world that begins with dirt and goes on beyond time.  I marveled at seeing these grasses transformed into paper. It bordered on magic and myth, like learning Rumpelstiltskin's trick without the bargain or the temper. Depending upon the grasses I collected, the paper w...

In his book about his journey to the Himalayas to see the snow leopard, Peter Matthiessen writes most often about elusiveness. Perhaps to make sure his readers understand the essential quality of that which cannot be grasped, Matthiessen calls his book--a journal, really, of his days of expedition during the fall of 1973-- The Snow Leopard in honor of the cat he did not see. But, of course, not seeing the snow leopard was at the heart of all he was otherwise able to see. When I finished this book, I was in a strange state for days. As though I, too, had been on expedition high in the realm of those mountains--mythic as their height and distance render them--at once appearing and disappearing into their mists and snow and terrain. Before embarking on this journey, Matthiessen, a practicing Buddhist, sought counsel from his Roshi who told the trekker poised for adventure to go without expectation. This counsel proved pivotal to the pilgrimage. Like the mantra it was no doubt intended...

I say the number 9 is my favorite number in the same way a child labels a number lucky. Nine is my favorite lucky number. My birth month falls in the 9th calendar month of the year. The number that marks our home, makes it stand out in the neighborhood, is nothing less than good old favorite number 9. In a book I once read, the protagonist is a young math teacher and her every daily encounter is replete with numerical reference. One of her students thinks the number 9 looks like girls playing in the grass. I like that and how its fine round body sits on a sturdy slanted stem. Oblique in that way, neither parallel nor perpendicular, but inclined. Inclined: It slants toward possibility. I once met the book's author and she signed my copy while we talked about our favorite numbers. Guess what? She is a 9-lover, too; and into my book she placed the number 9 with an exclamation point at the center of a hand-drawn sun. And I thought, anything IS possible. Yesterday, a ...

The journey of slow development is the way of transformation. Quoting Dögen, "It leads everywhere." From duty to freedom, the yamas to samadhi. Eight rungs, like the steps of a ladder; eight limbs, like the branches of a tree: This is raja yoga--the royal path. There is no difference between cooking and the Buddha's way, says Jeong Kwan, a Zen Korean monk, a nun who is not a chef but prepares her temple meals like one. Her journey of freedom is contagious. Even better, she says it is available to all. Her story is a balm for the seeker's soul. It includes heartache and loss, human labor and boundless creativity. I learn that trust in the universe does not require certainty but presence. Curiosity and a playful awareness are essential to taking ownership of the phenomenal world. Jeong Kwan says this is freedom.