For the Love of Water.

About cows, and starfish, and roses, there is no
argument. They die, after all.

But water is a question, so many living things in it,
but what is it, itself, living or not? Oh gleaming

generosity, how can they write you out?

~ Mary Oliver, an excerpt from the poem called 'Some Things, Say the Wise Ones'

I've found myself wondering if water holds love. I feel it in my mouth and on the inner edges of my eyelids. There is a general sense of humidity about my skin. My palms and feet experience a sense of dampness. In the proximity of others I get the sense of a humidity that we create together. Does this humidity hold love?

When a drink of water meets my thirst it is a satisfaction and a silence beyond description. Water. It represents both a need and an ultimate fulfillment.

Water comes to me from the natural world, and through avenues of human transportation to slake my thirst, bathe my body, and transport my shit. Then this water rejoins nature by evaporation from my skin and the moisture in my breath, as well as back through structures of human-made technology to rejoin the world's waterways: the lakes, rivers, streams and oceans.

And the water that leaves my toilet or goes down my drain goes on its own journey to meet the water that has left your toilet and has gone down your drain. This water finds its way toward the lakes, rivers, streams and oceans, wrapping the world in a global hug of water and humidity, our biosphere.

When I am in a room with other people we are all exchanging the moistness of our exhalations, knowing one another intimately, if impersonally. Moisture from my body comes out through my nose or mouth, and becomes dispersed in the air where it may find itself traveling very deeply into your body on your inhalation, or it might just play around in your nose or mouth for a while and then come out again, perhaps eager to explore more. But yes, we are close: much closer than we sometimes realize.

The beautiful scent of a flower is a love note from the water contained in the cells of the flower to the water in the receptive cells in my nose. And the scent of my lover is also a love letter from the water in his cells to the water in mine. These smells can also speak of illness. A rank smell coming from someone might be a message from the water in the cells speaking of disease, even calling for help. It could be a gesture of love desiring help for the afflicted body. And the smells of death might be a warning.

This generous water (as Mary Oliver called it) supports the playground of our lives. Water supports incredible abundance and diversity in life, and our actions whether helpful or harmful are aided by this same water. Can we learn to respect and honor the miraculous gift of water for our lives? It is us and it empowers us.

The water in the Gulf of Mexico is crying. I get the sense that water loves to play with our life forms. We are so intimate with it! Every birth is reveled in by water, and every death is an opportunity for renewal for water. And water also contains the current disaster in the Gulf. I feel ashamed because I am a part of humanity that busted that hole in the floor of the ocean where too much uncontrolled oil is leaking. The water is now holding giant clouds of oil and dispersant where marine life used to frolic, mate and live. The water is supporting the great globs of oil that birds are unknowingly diving into. The water-filled bodies of birds want to feed their families, and instead of a beakful of fresh Gulf seafood, many are getting a mouthful of oil. Water holds the bodies of these suffering birds. As I offer my tears to this water, it is water that forms my tears.

* With gratitude to Rev. Hogetsu Laurie Belzer for her inspiring Dharma talk on "Swimming in the Samadhi of Water” at Ancient Dragon Zen Gate. *

** This article is fulfills part of the 21.5.800 Writing and Yoga Challenge. **

*** Simul-posted at Elephant Journal ***

‘Man’ means “to think”

"The feeble seekers are those who lack enthusiasm, criticize their teachers, are rapacious, inclined to bad action, eat much, are in the power of women, unstable, cowardly, ill, dependent, speak harshly, have weak characters and lack virility. The Guru (Teacher or Master) guides such seekers in the path of Mantra Yoga only. With much effort, the sadhaka can reach enlightenment in twelve years. (The word mantra is derived from the word 'man', meaning to think. Mantra thus means a sacred thought or prayer to be repeated with full understanding of its meaning. It takes a long time, perhaps years, for a mantra to take firm root in the mind of a feeble sadhaka and still longer for it to bear fruit.)"
-B.K.S. Iyengar, Light on Yoga, 51st paragraph of the Introduction.

Even though Mantra Yoga is advised for “feeble seekers” I don’t think that there is anything easy about it. So there is nothing “feeble” about Mantra Yoga itself, or about any human beings I know either. So I’m not going to talk about “feeble seekers” because I don’t think about people that way, except maybe myself on a bad day…

I think that we are all using mantras or thoughts to direct our experience whether we acknowledge it or not. Since Mantra Yoga is advised here for someone who is experiencing difficulty in life, I look at it as a first line of defense against the pains of life, and the fragmentation of mind.

What is your Mantra?

I think of a ‘mantra’ as thoughts I tell myself repeatedly. On a bad day my mantra might be, “I wish I was dead,” and on a good day it might be, “I love this!” What gives?? These are just thoughts that bubble up inside of me.

Repeated thoughts are powerful

It’s a good idea to watch your thoughts, because they make a real difference in how you move throughout the world. If I have evaluated myself as unlovable, or ‘nobody likes me’ it is going to affect my body language. I might make less eye contact, and avoid interactions with others who might like me, so I am likely to miss opportunities. And if someone is nice to me I might react inappropriately friendly, wordlessly saying ‘wow, it’s so amazing that you like me.’ When maybe I’m just likeable and so it’s really not such a big deal that SOMEBODY LIKES ME. Aren’t we all essentially likeable beings? I shouldn’t be so especially horrible that nobody likes me, right? Well, the mechanisms of thought are not rational in the scientific sense. Our thoughts spring up from how we feel and what we’ve been told—all that touchy-feely stuff.

So it could be time to tell yourself something good

If you listen to your daily brew of thoughts and hear some nasty stuff, it could be helpful to take action to interrupt the toxic thought-stream. You could try positive affirmations.

I have a teacher who’s really into this affirmation stuff. So I tried it for a while, and I found it helpful in a particular way. When I started to purposefully say positive things to myself over and over, I had a heightened awareness of how poor my inner messages were. It was as if my gentle messages of blessing to myself elicited an attack from my inner status quo of low self-esteem.

An example would be if I were to tell myself that ‘I am competent, loveable and wise’, and if what I believed about myself was that I was inadequate, unlovable and stupid. Well, bullshit! Total rejection and inner turmoil could result.

Prayerful thoughts can be helpful

I have found repeated messages of prayer to be more authentically helpful for me. In prayer I am opening up my inner world to something larger than my old thoughts, so there is more space for a fresh breeze of inspiration to enter my experience.

“Mantra thus means a sacred thought or prayer to be repeated with full understanding of its meaning.”

This is very personal. Finding words that are helpful at any given time could be as individual as you.

These have worked for me:

“You are not only you, you are also me. I am not only myself, I am also you. I should care to live for you, and you should be able to care for me.”
-Guru Nitya

“My work is to carry this love
as comfort for those who long for you,
to go everywhere you’ve walked
and gaze at the pressed-down dirt.”
-Rumi, as translated by Coleman Barks

Poetry can offer this kind of healing opening in the mindspace. I also like Mary Oliver, Walt Whitman and others.

Bat-mind

So, I'm stuck on the recent Batman movie: The Dark Knight... Not that I liked it, exactly. In fact I left the Imax theater in a huff, and even called the movie irresponsible. I later read a review that reflected some of those first thoughts, and felt somewhat validated. But I still had some unfinished business in processing this movie experience. I want to look at an aspect of what it might mean, and what follows is an utterly personal interpretation, along with more thoughts.

Heath Ledger's Joker is so flirty, sparky and joyful as he does or ponders evil. The treatment of his character by the filmmakers shows a natural human tendency to dwell on negativity, even to savor bad experience. A recent example from my life: I was recently out with a friend for dinner, and I said that I had enjoyed so many things on the menu, and there was only a sandwich I wasn't crazy about. Well, rather than asking what I liked, my friend wanted to know the one thing I didn't like. I repeated back to be sure,"You want to know what I didn't like?" I did tell her, and I resisted my own urge to wallow in my one not-so-good experience at this really great restaurant. A part of me wanted to say something like, "The bread was as dry as sawdust. It was so salty and "blackened" that I really had trouble convincing myself that it was "food." In fact, the taste buds on my tongue cringed and recoiled from the sight of the approaching abomination on bread." Instead I just said it was kind of dry, to allow us to move on to better topics. I probably could have put a negative spin on the whole evening by making a joke of the place.

I think we tend to filter experience through what we don't like. The Joker in "The Dark Knight" takes violence and destruction (things we're not supposed to like) and allows us to really dote on them. He's our friendly-eyed guide into evil. He's crazy, dark and thrilling.

If our guide into good could have only been so alluring. Instead we get a monotoned Batman who behind the scenes, as Bruce Wayne, is having a career crisis. Again this aspect of the movie shows how hard it can be to define a positive and joyful life when we spend so much time articulating what we don't like. Batman and Bruce Wayne really seem to be faking it. Both are doing what they think they are supposed to be doing and trying to please others. There is almost no life in our representative for good (even though I am a fan of Christian Bale from "Velvet Goldmine").

At the same time the Joker is just brimming with life as he pushes against his own invisible boundaries of evil-doing. He seems to have tapped into his life-energy more than Batman/Bruce who seems tapped out and confused. The Joker doesn't need a thing: only knives and some lint in his pockets. But, of course, the Joker is off-center and delusional. Even so-in his skewed and sick sense of reality he believes himself to be achieving and fulfilling his desires, which is more than we can say for the so-called super hero.

"The Dark Knight" shows that we have lost hope. A character we might have been inspired by in the past has lost his zest for life, and his nemesis has the delightful pungency of stinky cheese. It is such a good representation of the times and how we're stuck in melancholy and negativity: depending on violence and pornographic thrills like big explosions to keep us going. I empathize with the makers of Batman: It's hard to know how to articulate a better world where people are more balanced and able to bring zest into everyday activities.

How many people do you know who do not like their lives? I know that I have struggled to like mine (So I guess I do grudgingly identify with Bale's character. I just wanted to see him do easily what I have worked hard for.). And I am doing my best when I am directing my attention into creating what I want, instead of dwelling and spiraling down into what I don't want, or past failure.

A good portal into this ability to direct one's experience toward what one wants is meditation, and a good first step is getting to know your mind in a state that is free of judgement. Or just sit quietly and ask yourself,"What do I want?"

**
From "Peonies" by Mary Oliver:

Do you love this world?
Do you cherish your humble and silky life?
Do you adore the green grass, with it's terror beneath?

Do you also hurry, half-dressed and barefoot, into the garden, and softly, and exclaiming of their dearness, fill your arms with the white and pink flowers, with their honeyed heaviness, their lush trembling, their eagerness to be wild and perfect for a moment, before they are nothing, forever?
**

Let's forget the Joker and Batman now, and go for a walk in nature.

Peace.