And in the blink of an eye...

... and in the blink of an eye, my father is gone. After so many years and so many goodbyes, my father died last week and I find myself as unprepared as if he had suddenly stopped mid-sentence. I am shocked, sad and dismayed by how much I am grieving. My father was sick for some time, his dementia was very advanced and he had many other health issues. It was time for him to die, he was 88, he lived a full and wonderful life and yet, it was too soon, how strange.

I was due to go on a week's retreat to Auschwitz and I jokingly said to a friend. "if my dad knew what I was intending, he would die", and so he did. I am back home now, having spent the past few days in the States with my brother and the rest of our small family saying goodbye to my very special dad.

He was very special. I have before now written about his history, the many terrible things he overcame to become a father, a husband, a man of some means and above all, a warm and loving person. I am under no illusions, my father was a difficult man to live with, but he was also so heartful, so funny and completely devoted to us, his family. Today, as I finally write the words announcing his death, I realise how much it has taken me to write this down. it is too final. I haven't wanted to tell many people. Every sign of care, every message of sympathy is so hard for me to take. Tears seem to keep falling from my eyes. I thought I was so ready to say goodbye. I'm not. Slowly, slowly, with the love of those around me, I am letting go of my dad.

My heart is touched...

This afternoon my heart is so full and so touched by the responses I received to my last blog post. I have been so fearful of telling people that I am going on this retreat to Auschwitz. I have been afraid of what the reaction would be and I certainly seem to be getting some reaction, but I am also getting some beautiful, loving support from friends. 

I understand that for many people my going to spend five days walking the ground of a concentration camp, in silence at times, meditating, and reciting prayers, reading the names of those who died and performing rituals to honour the people, the space and the time of Auschwitz, may seem morbid and bizarre. For me it feels so right that I am almost lost for words. I have thought about this a lot this week - as the time gets nearer and the reality of what I intend to do gets closer I feel the strength of the rightness of the decision more and more, though I grow increasingly aware that I have no idea of the outcome.

I spoke before about this sense of longing that I am feeling. It is such a crystalline yearning that doesn't seem to have a clear focus, though the feeling is clear. I looked up the meaning of yearning and found the following:

Yearning:

1. Have an intense feeling of loss or lack and longing for something.

2. Be filled with compassion or warm feeling. 

Wow - this really nailed it for me. It is exactly what I am feeling now. The question I have to ask myself is, 'If I am feeling a lack of something, then what is it?' I recognise and accept the feelings of warmth and compassion that are arising in me now, but the lacking is more problematic. It's as if all I want to do is watch soppy old movies that give me a legitimate outlet for tears. Right now film clips of kittens, puppies and babies have me brimming over and I can hardly watch those reality TV shows where they make over some unfortunate family's ramshackle house without winding up sobbing. What is going on?

I think my heart is opening. Does this sound crazy? The longing feels like a word I remember from my studies of philosophy in university – ‘weltschmerz’ – a sense or feeling that the unhealed state of the world is causing us to feel pain. (Boy, I just impressed myself with the pretentiousness of the last sentence!)  This has a quality of what I am feeling right now and it also a little of the feeling that I am bringing with me to my retreat. I am sitting here in wonderment  at the ‘chutpah’ that allows me to even make such a big statement. “What, heart opening? Me, don’t be ridiculous!’

I am also curious about what it will be like to finally be in Poland. My entire family comes from Poland and it will be my first visit. I am looking forward to an experience that I know will be both strange and familiar. I have an inkling of those sensations even when I shop in the tiny little Polish shops that have opened all over London. I scan the shelves and see Polish food labels that have words on them I recognize from my childhood and sometimes I even buy the foods just because I am excited to have a bit of my mother and father’s past in my kitchen. This whole trip, to Krakow and to Auschwitz, is bringing the past into the present for me.

As I accumulate the warm clothing and thermal underwear I will need for my trip I do stop and think about how much I am blessed to have and how little my parents had in that place. I am filled with the warmth and compassion that is also part of yearning for them, for my unnamed family and for all of those who will have walked the grounds of Auschwitz before me.

I am overwhelmed by a prayer said for me by a wonderfully dear friend and can only echo this for me and for all those who face their life journeys with directness and courage:

“May you be safe, may you be in peace and may you be surrounded by love”.

Time flying...

I am sitting here with calendars, flight schedules, work dates and trying to figure out my commitments over the next few months so I can plan trips to the USA for work, dates in London and time for myself. I still have real problems setting my priorities correctly. I put work first, assume I have the stamina of an 18 year old and inevitably wind up exhausted, tearful and anxious.


This time I am determined to do it differently. I will put myself and my needs first and then set up my work schedule. I say that with great confidence now, but my resolve so easily crumbles in the face of client needs. I guess I still have the same old need to be needed that I always had. Some things don't change, but this time... I live in hope.


I returned from the USA both infused with the joy of chanting with wonderful kirtan chanters and exhausted from travelling so much in such a short space of time. Today feels like the first day since my return that my body felt even part way recovered from the mad rushing about - so what did I do? Did I relax and enjoy my body's beginning to return to normal? No! I had to go shopping. Some folks have their drug, alcohol, TV addictions, I have my shopping. I managed to return home just before everything started to hurt again and I consider this an achievement. I am learning to listen to myself a little bit.


The seemingly sudden arrival of autumn has sent me into a bit of a spin. The summer slipped through my fingers before I had a chance to really grab it and now autumn is here. The trees are changing colour and there is that colder feel in the air. Soon the clocks go back and there you are - another winter arriving.


This year is different. In a few weeks I go off on my week long retreat. I am loathe to voice where and why since this feels like an extremely personal journey to the dark side of the planet. Every time I tell someone where I am going for this retreat I get their particular viewpoint. I understand that what I am doing is somewhat extreme, perhaps a bit bizarre and for sure, challenging.  I deeply and completely know that this is the right thing for me to be doing. My history is a present part of me. How to explain this. I've been thinking a lot about this over the past few weeks and I have come to this - at some point in my life I knew that I would visit Auschwitz, the concentration camp that both my parents were in. I also knew that there was no possibility that I would want to visit this unhealed place as part of an afternoon tourist party on a day trip from Krakow. When I saw that there was a retreat to Auschwitz that was being led by a group of Buddhists, with the involvement of all faiths and all nationalities for a week in early November, I realised that this was something I wanted, needed and felt magnetically pulled to do. I need to walk that ground, to explore what there is there for me and to put together some of the fractured pieces of my past in order to live more fully in the present. Sounds wooly, doesn't it? Well, it sort of it. I have no idea what there will be waiting for me in Poland. I trust that whatever it is, is right for me. I will let you know.


Meanwhile I am filled with an autumnal sense of longing. Huh??  Yearning for the missing bits of my life, the warmth of friendships, the joys of small things in the day that I sometimes forget to notice, the meditative times I let slip by. As another summer passes I feel like all the things I love are right here and yet so much is still just out of my reach. Pretty frustrating to know that I have everything I need, want, imagine or desire to make my life and more importantly, my self, complete and that I still watch things pass by, as if in a movie of someone else's life. 


Kindness and compassion towards my self, towards everyone and everything around me seems like the only 'right' action now. I watch my living movie and also welcome the future episodes - this series will run and run. All I have to do is stay still long enough.

Goodbye to an old friend...written on 29 July

As I sit here hiding from the noise of sawing and chopping, I find myself really sad to see the huge tree in front of my house finally go.  This is the tree that has ushered in the changes of season for the 20+ years that I've lived here. Today it is being removed.


This tree, sycamore, I think, has been my friend for a long time. when I was recovering from back surgery and couldn't really get out of bed much, it was the tree that brought spring and summer into my bedroom.  When my parents came to visit one October many years ago, we swept up the autumn leaves that the tree shed. We did it together and I remember all of laughing at how many leaves this one tree had, no sooner had we cleared up one huge lot of leaves, than another huge amount would cover my tiny front garden.


And therein lies the problem - my tiny front garden and the tiny front gardens of our neighbours. The tree had just grown too big and was becoming a danger to our property. Undermining the foundations. So farewell old friend, you've seen me through good times and bad and I already miss the shade of your overhanging branches. I will not miss the leaves you drop every autumn that make a slippery mess and herald the arrival of winter, but I will miss the first sounds of birdsong outside my bedroom window every Spring. 


Thanks for all the blessings and farewell. If you can call a tree a friend, then you have been a stalwart one. Very sad today...

Retreat

I just read this article by Bernie Glassman - this is the retreat I am going on in early November.  I cannot eloquently put into words why I am going, I just know, purely and completely, that I have to go.  I leave this here for anyone interested to read.

Bearing Witness at Auschwitz by Bernie Glassman This year I'm returning to Auschwitz-Birkenau. I go almost every year. People wonder why I go back there. They weren't surprised the first time I traveled to Poland, in 1994, to visit the biggest of the death camps. I've been a teacher of Zen for over 40 years, and I'm also a Jew from Brooklyn whose mother originally came from Poland. In November 1997, the Zen Peacemakers will be conducting its seventeenth global, multi-faith Bearing Witness retreat at Auschwitz, and I will be there once again. Strictly speaking, my presence won't be necessary at the retreat. A number of leaders and teachers from different religious traditions will be there. So why do I return? Why does a Zen teacher go back to Auschwitz-Birkenau again and again? In the Zen Peacemakers, we practice three Core Tenets: Penetrating the unknown by letting go of our fixed ideas; bearing witness to joy and suffering; and healing ourselves and others. At Auschwitz it is not hard to let go of fixed ideas. The place itself, with its endless gray skies overlooking miles of barbed wire and crumbling extermination compounds, is so terrifying that no matter how much we prepare for the visit, no matter how much we've read about it or pondered, it overwhelms us. Even if, like me, you've seen the exhibits more than once and have even walked several times down the endless railroad tracks that once brought so many to their end, there's one thing you can still count on: Your expectations, your preconceptions, your most basic belief systems concerning love and hate, good and evil, will be annihilated in the face of Auschwitz. In fact, after seeing the endless photographs of dying camp inmates and the high piles of their belongings pillaged by the Nazis, and after visiting Birkenau and viewing the remains of that meticulous technology developed for the purpose of mass extermination and genocide, we stop thinking altogether. As writers and philosophers have already said, there's no language for Auschwitz. I can only add, there are no thoughts, either. We are in a place of unknowing. Much of Zen practice, including many teaching techniques used by Zen masters, is aimed at bringing the Zen practitioner to this same place of not-knowing, of letting go of what he or she knows. After walking through Auschwitz and Birkenau, there is an end to thought. We are numbed. All we can do is see the endless train tracks on the snow, feel the icy cold of a Polish winter on our bare hands, smell the rotting wood in the few remaining barracks, and listen to the names of the dead. At Birkenau we don't sit in silence, we chant names. First we sit in a large circle around the railroad tracks, at what was once the Selection Site, directly opposite the crematoriums. A shofar blows to start the meditation period, and then four different people, each sitting at a different point on the rim of the circle, begin to chant the names of those who'd died at Auschwitz. The names come from official lists compiled by the SS. They're also provided to us by various retreat participants, obtained from memory, family and friends. All of us take turns chanting names. Elisa Sara Fein (10.3.1907-8.12.1943) Heinrich Israel Feiner (8.3.1878-2.1.1944) Markus Fejer (14.7.1925-19.6.1942) Rywa Sara Feld (5.12.1911-6.12.194)) We chant for ten minutes, and then the person sitting next to us begins. The lists include the victims' dates of birth and death. That's how we know that some were very old, and some were only infants. But we don't chant the dates, only the names. Lilly Ernst (9.2.1939-17.1.1944) Hugo Fenyvesi (27.10.1875-5.5.1942) Sophie Ferko (15.3.1943-21.5.1944) We are a global group, so the names are chanted by American, Irish, Dutch, Italian, German, Swiss, Israeli,Palestinean, Polish, and French voices. The names themselves are also from a multitude of languages. Everyone gets their turn. Across the large circle we hear the names. Sometimes one resembles the name of a co-worker back home, or of a friend. Sometimes the chanter pauses. She's come across a name that's exactly like her own. For telling names is like telling stories. When we recite the name out loud, dead bones come to life, the bones of men, women, and children from all over Europe. They lived, some grew up, some married, some had children, and all died. Their names become our names, their stories, our stories. That is what happens when we bear witness. Peter Grosz, an American living in the Czech Republic who participated in our last retreat, recently to wrote us (many of the people who attend send us letters, articles, and journal entries describing their experiences). Discussing the meaning of bearing witness, he wrote the following: "You can have seen what you've seen and never be a witness. You can see the whole world and never have witnessed anything. Only when what you see becomes significant to someone -- to yourself, for instance -- do you become a witness." How does something become significant? What is this process of witnessing, or bearing witness, that is more than just seeing? Evening Sharing in a Barrack When we bear witness to a situation, we become each and every aspect of that situation. When we bear witness to Auschwitz, at that moment there is no separation between us and the people who died. There is also no separation between us and the people who killed. We ourselves, as individuals, with our identities and ego structure, disappear, and we become the terrified people getting off the trains, the indifferent or brutal guards, the snarling dogs, the doctor who points right or left, the smoke and ash belching from the chimneys. When we bear witness to Auschwitz, we are nothing but all the elements of Auschwitz. It is not an act of will, it is an act of letting go. What we let go of is the concept of the person we think we are. It's why we start from unknowing. Only then can we become all the voices of the universe -- those that suffer, those that inflict suffering, and those that stand idly by. For we are all these people. We are the universe. After five days of sitting at the Selection Site and chanting names, many could see themselves as those who had gone to the gas chambers, including those who had no direct family connection to Auschwitz. Mothers thought of themselves bringing their own children into the death chambers. Men saw their own bodies going up in smoke in the crematoria. It was harder to see oneself as a guard who'd herded people to their death. One of the retreat participants was a Vietnam veteran. He said that he could see himself as one of the guards on top of the guardposts, aiming his gun at the people below. But not many people could see themselves that way. The famous prayer about oneness, the Sh'ma Yisrael, begins with Listen: Listen, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One. Not only does oneness begin with listening, listening begins with oneness. And Zen Peacemakers Buddhist service begins similarly: Attention! Attention! Raising the Mind of Compassion, the Supreme Meal is offered to all the hungry spirits throughout space and time, filling the smallest particle to the largest space. Listen! Attention! Bear witness! It can't happen if you want to stay away from pain and suffering. It probably won't happen if, like most people, you go to Auschwitz, look over the exhibits, and return to the buses for a quick getaway. When you come to Auschwitz, stay a while, and begin to listen to all the voices of that terrible universe -- the voices that are none other than you -- then something happens. During our 1996 retreat, a man of Jewish descent living in Denmark stood up one evening and spoke about forgiving those who had perpetrated cruelties at Auschwitz. A short while later I stood up and suggested: "And then what? So you forgive, and then what? Is that the end of it? Or is there something else to be done?" If I really bear witness, if I become all the voices of Auschwitz, then it is myself that I am forgiving, no one else. If I see that at every moment a part of me is raping, while another is being raped. A part of me is destroying while another part is being destroyed. A part of me goes hungry while another eats to excess. A part of me is paralyzed and a part of me takes action. Then it makes no sense to stay in the place of blame and guilt, of anger and accusation. When I begin to see that all these parts are me, I can begin to take care of the situation. When we're bearing witness to Auschwitz, we're doing nothing other than bearing witness to aspects of ourselves. It's no different when we bear witness to poverty, homelessness, hunger, and disease. We see how one part of us does something, and another part of us suffers. If we get stuck in anger and in guilt, then we're paralyzed, we can't act. Only when we see that all these demons are nothing other than us, we can actually take action. Then we can begin to take care of the other, who is none other than our self. In Buddhism we say that we are all constantly transmigrating from one realm to another at every minute. There is the hell realm and the realm of the gods. There is also a realm of hungry ghosts. One of our images for a hungry ghost is a painfully thin person with a tiny mouth, a long, narrow throat and an immense stomach. The hungry ghost is always hungry, but has only a tiny capacity to absorb the nourishment that he needs. I go back to Auschwitz again and again for this reason: Each time I return to that huge death camp I realize anew that I am full of hungry ghosts. I'm full of clinging, craving, unsatisfied spirits. Each part of me that is struggling, in pain, unsatisfied, angry, and unresolved, is a hungry ghost. A starving child, an abusive parent, a stricken mother leading her child into the death chamber, a brutal guard, a drug addict who kills to get his fix, they are all starving, struggling aspects of me. Me is everyone and everything, including those that look away. At the end of his long letter to me, Peter added: "Auschwitz is a Godless place only for those who see it as bereft of voice." He stayed there for five days and found Auschwitz full of voices, all of them his own. Attention! Attention! Raising the Mind of Compassion, the Supreme Meal is offered to all the hungry spirits throughout space and time, filling the smallest particle to the largest space. All you hungry spirits in the Ten Directions, please gather here. Sharing your distress, I offer you this food, hoping it will resolve your thirsts and hungers. I invite you to join us this November, 2011 in this memorable retreat! .....read more about the Retreat and/or register

Changes in the weather

This morning a dear friend of mine described the descending of depression as like the change in the weather - something that just happens and that we are fairly powerless to change. The 'just snap out of it' brigade is powerless in the face of genuine depression. I should know, I finally admitted to feeling pretty depressed this morning.


For the past few weeks I have been waking every morning at about 4 am.  I get up, go to the bathroom and return to my bed, and then I just lie there and stare at the ceiling, or lie there and don't stare at the ceiling, or just lie there and watch my thoughts. The one thing I don't do very easily is fall asleep. My thoughts are so involved and so circular that they don't let go of me for long enough for my mind to relax into sleep. I certainly don't let go of them for any time. I obsess about small details and plan my life for the next months. 


"Will the weather in Ipswich be nice enough next week, will I get a tan, have I gained weight, can I actually appear in something sleeveless if it's hot (an immediate no to this), will I make anything in the pottery course, will I make anything nice, will the weather in italy during the week there be good, will the mountain road scare me this year, what time should we leave for the airport, have I gained too much weight to appear in public, why do I always abandon good intentions and not treat myself well, am I too old to carry on working in the way I do, am I any good at my work or am I just fooling myself, should I tell Ralph how I am feeling, is there any point in telling anyone how low I feel, will it change anything, will it fix anything, I am so tired of all of this self-doubt and anxiety, why talk about it it won't change, I thought this had gone away and now that it's back, why do I feel embarrassed to say it out loud, if I don't say it, will it go away????????????"


I AM DEPRESSED! Damn! Not only am I depressed, I am so very disappointed in myself for finding myself in this oh so familiar state again. I thought I had it licked once and for all. I guess pride really does come before a fall and how much I feel I have fallen. That's why I am writing again today. I need to put this out there and somehow be able to examine this stuck sensation that is actually making me feel slightly sick to my stomach today. While I was walking down the street today, the noise, the smells and the proximity of people felt too much. I am working tomorrow and thank goodness I am as good as I am at compartmentalising my life. I am usually able to switch on auto-pilot and deliver my courses at a high standard. The problem is that when I feel like this my confidence is so low that no matter how high the standard of my delivery, the result never really pleases me. I have to watch that and remember to recognise myself for what I do and how good I am.


When did this self-doubt and low feeling begin? When did it grow into the dark cloud that I feel like I am living under right now? Why isn't it gone?


I have no real answers. I have lots of theories, lots of self-analysis, but no answer. I think that even if I had the definitive why, I would still feel the same. I would not have the solution. It is not as simple as pressing a button or changing my mood. I can change my mood, but it feels superficial. I can socialise and entertain and chat. Oh god, can I chat. I am thinking of making chatter an Olympic sport nd entering myself as the chief competitor. I know I chatter more when I am low, as if the noise in my head will be drowned out by my words. I guess that's why 4 am is so tough, there's so much less noise to drown out my feelings.


I am not writing more about this now. I believe it's a positive thing to have come out of the closet of misery. I can't quite declare 'I'm out and I'm proud' at this very moment, but I am here. I have arrived at this point and it is a better place than secrecy.

She who hesitates...

I begin again.
This is the fifth blog entry I have begun in the past few weeks. I think I am beginning to develop a writer's stutter. A condition that means I begin to write and then I hesitate. I begin again and get distracted. I begin again and decide that what I thought was important to get down in words is actually completely unimportant and in the Buddhist /Eastern tradition I just begin to understand that what is, is... and so I stop writing.  I think I have to stop not meeting myself like this. I am starting to suspect that I am avoiding myself.  It wouldn't be the first time I avoided myself. I am a master at the art of avoidance. 


STOP!!! Back up, rewind, begin again. 


No, that's not true, I am not a 'master' of avoidance, that is just one of those blanket statements that I make to exaggerate my feelings or behaviour so that I can create a story for myself. I am not much of a master, more of a talented amateur. As a matter of fact, I find it tough to avoid the things that disturb me. I obsess, I anxiatate (I think that is an invented word) and I chatter on to all those willing to listen until I can no longer avoid myself and have dissipated all the energy around disturbing events. I am doing this at the moment. 


A few months back I did some work that I was unhappy with. I didn't listen to my gut reaction telling me not to take on the contract and proceeded to work for a client in whom I didn't have much confidence and deliver a programme I felt hesitant about. It worked (sort of)  though I still wasn't happy with the work or the client. I recently resigned from a part of the programme that I felt unable to deliver properly and this was the right decision. This partial resignation still left me feeling unsure and there was still a sinking feeling inside me every time I thought of the future work to which I was still committed.


A few days ago I was given more information about the internal politics and crises my client organisation was dealing with. My training consultant colleagues had been shabbily treated and I felt even more distressed that I was still committed to working with this chaotic organisation. After much deliberation and now I see that it was probably more deliberation than the issue deserved, I finally pulled the plug on the rest of this work. Sure, the money would have been useful, but I saw with crystal clarity that I need to take care of myself in all of this. I walked away from the last time I worked with this client feeling unsure and somewhat dissatisfied with my work.


I now see that it was also the state that the organisation was in that was creating distress in me. The staff  there are unhappy, demotivated and angry and I was on the receiving end of their anger at their own management. I will not do that again. I will not let myself be used as on outsider whipping post. This is the right decision for me. So why does it feel so bad? Why do I feel that I have let myself down? I do believe that I should be able to shoulder all of these things, shrug them off and fix the situation. It is usually the last thing I do - fix the situation by fixing it for me. It is unusual for me to put myself first. Maybe that's why it feels so shaky.


One of these days I will learn to trust my gut - to go with my self-protective feelings and to take care of me first. I am very good at giving myself 'things', at buying myself stuff, but I am not nearly as good at nourishing and loving the little me that today needs a bit of TLC.


I am pleased that I am still learning, that I am still discovering ways to be kind to myself. Next time, maybe I won't hesitate so much before taking care.