“It is more difficult to be a complete human being than a saint. It means nothing can be excluded or suppressed.” —Stephen Levine
“Does God have a set way of prayer, a way that He expects each of us to follow? I doubt it. I believe some people—lots of people—pray through the witness of their lives, through the work they do, the friendships they have, the love they offer people and receive from people. Since when are words the only acceptable form of prayer?” —Dorothy Day
Art, gardening, writing, contemplation, mindfulness, cooking, mothering, loving kindness, communing with nature, yoga, social action, nursing, and other forms of service all function as daily practice for women. So does nightly praying, keeping the Shabbat, sitting meditation, repeating a mantra, fasting, and other practices traditionally prescribed by religious groups. The important thing is to bring a conscious, ongoing awareness into your chosen activity, acknowledging that it forms a part of your spiritual path. This intent, this consciousness, helps to stabilize and deepen your experience.
It is best to connect with a practice from the heart, not because someone else recommends it. When you find one that speaks to you, use it regularly. A daily—or at least an ongoing—habit of consciously connecting to the spirit by a specific method creates a pattern in the body and in the unconscious which will carry you through when the mind is exhausted. Consistent practice automatically leads you to spiritual renewal and revitalization.
Retreats, seminars, and workshops help to broaden and strengthen spiritual practice and introduce you to others on the same path. In time, you may wish to find a teacher or become part of a community, but the first step is to establish an ongoing practice.
Ayya Khema, a Theravadan Buddhist nun, was born in Germany and as a child escaped the Nazis by fleeing to China with her family. Along with other Jewish refugees, she was put into a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp where her father died. She eventually married and had two children, but managed to meditate as a householder. Before she became involved with Buddhism, she learned meditation at the Aurobindo ashram in India from the Mother, and studied Advaita at Ramana Maharishi’s ashram. She has established Buddhist centers in Germany, Australia, and Nun’s Island in Sri Lanka, and is the author of Being Nobody, Going Nowhere.
Nothing Special
Spiritual practice is often misunderstood and believed to be something special. It isn’t. It is one’s whole body and mind. Nothing special at all, just oneself. Many people think of it as meditation or ritual, devotional practice or chanting to be performed at a specific time in a certain place. Or it may be connected with a special person without whom the practice cannot occur. These are views and opinions which lead to nothing.
In the best case they may result in sporadic practice and in the worst case, they lead to fracturing ourselves, making two, three or four people out of ourselves when we aren’t even one whole yet. Namely, the ordinary person doing all the ordinary worldly chores and the other one who becomes spiritual at certain times in diverse ways. Meditation, rituals, devotional practice, chanting, certain places, certain people can be added to our lives but they are not the essence of our spirituality.
Our practice consists of constant purification; there’s nothing else to be done. Eventually we will arrive at a point where our thought processes and feelings are not only kind and loving but also full of wisdom, bringing benefit to ourselves and others.
Ayya Khema, Little Dust in Our Eyes
“Always meditate on whatever provokes resentment. ”—Atisha
Start Where You Are
There are two slogans that go along with the tonglen practice: “Sending and taking should be practiced alternately. / These two should ride the breath”—which is actually a description of tonglen and how it works—and “Begin the sequence of sending and taking with yourself.”
The slogan “Begin the sequence of sending and taking with yourself” is getting at the point that compassion starts with making friends with ourselves, and particularly with our poisons—the messy areas. As we practice tonglen—taking and sending—and contemplate the lojong slogans, gradually it begins to dawn on us how totally interconnected we all are. Now people know that what we do to the rivers in South America affects the whole world, and what we do to the air in Alaska affects the whole world. Everything is interrelated— including ourselves, so this is very important, this making friends with ourselves. It’s the key to a more sane compassionate planet.
What you do for yourself—any gesture of kindness, any gesture of gentleness, any gesture of honesty and clear seeing toward yourself—will affect how you experience your world. In fact, it will transform how you experience the world. What you do for yourself, you’re doing for others, and what you do for others, you’re doingfor yourself. When you exchange yourself for others in the practice of tonglen, it becomes increasingly uncertain what is out there and what is in here.
If you have rage and righteously act it out and blame it all on others, it’s really you who suffers. The other people and the environment suffer also, but you suffer more because you’re being eaten up inside with rage, causing you to hate yourself more and more.
We act out because, ironically, we think it will bring us some relief. We equate it with happiness. Often there is some relief, for the moment. When you have an addiction and you fulfill that addiction, there is a moment in which you feel some relief. Then the nightmare gets worse. So it is with aggression. When you get to tell someone off, you might feel pretty good for a while, but somehow the sense of righteous indignation and hatred grows, and it hurts you. It’s as if you pick up hot coals with your bare hands and throw them at your enemy. If the coals happen to hit him, he will be hurt. But in the meantime, you are guaranteed to be burned.
On the other hand, if we begin to surrender to ourselves—begin to drop the story line and experience what all this messy stuff behind the story line feels like—we begin to find bodhichitta, the tenderness that’s under all that harshness. By being kind to ourselves, we become kind to others. By being kind to others—if it’s done properly, with proper understanding—we benefit as well. So the point is that we are completely interrelated. What you do to others, you do to yourself. What you do to yourself, you do to others.
Pema Chodron Start, Where You Are: A Guide to Compassionate Living
Also see Pema Chodron’s many excellent books including The Wisdom of No Escape, Shambhala, 1991.
Quotes to Contemplate:
“It is more difficult to be a complete human being than a saint. It means nothing can be excluded or suppressed.” —Stephen Levine
“There have been thousands upon thousands of people who have practiced meditation and obtained its fruits. Don’t doubt its possibilities because of the simplicity of its method. If you can’t find the truth right where you are, where else do you think you will find it?” —Dogen
“Simplicity of living means meeting life face to face. It means confronting life clearly, without unnecessary distractions, without trying to soften the awesomeness of our existence or masking the deeper manifestations of life with pretentions, distractions and unnecessary accumulations.” —Duane Elgin
“Spiritual growth may be measured by a decrease of afflictive emotions and increase of love and compassion for others.” —Chagdud Tulku
“Love is the choice to experience life as a member of the human family, a partner in the dance of life, rather than as an alien in the world or as a deity above the world, aloof and apart from human flesh. ” —Carter Heyward
“The question, ‘What shall we do?’ is the wrong question. The question, then, is 'How shall we be?’” —Sonia Johnson
“My religion is very simple—my religion is kindness.” —the Dalai Lama
“Caring for other people is the very essence of Islam.
Even a basic aspect of Islam, like prayers, should be curtailed if a human need has to be fulfilled. Prayers should not cut us off from people's needs; instead they should make us more sensitive.”—Kaukab Siddique
“On a spiritual path one may discover that the feminine principle embodied in motherhood is a stepping stone to our Christ-self, our Buddha-self, our divine self.”—Qahira Qalbi
“Firstly, if our transforming of Judaism is to be authentic, I believe we must start where Judaism is now, not from Biblical times.... Secondly, how do we define what is authentic Jewish practice? Is it what the rabbis say, or is it what the people do?" —Alix Prani
“When you prepare food, do not see with ordinary eyes and do not think with ordinary mind. Take up a blade of grass and construct a treasure king’s land; enter into a particle of dust and turn the great dharma wheel. Do not arouse disdainful mind when you prepare a broth of wild grasses; do not arouse joyful mind when you prepare a fine cream soup. ”—Dogen
“I think it pisses God off it you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don’t notice it.” —Alice Walker
“Your religion was written on tablets of stone by the iron finger of an angry God, so you would not forget it. The red man could never understand it or remember it. Our religion is the ways of the forefathers, the dreams of our old men, sent them by the Great Spirit, and the visions of our sachems. And it is written in the hearts of our people.” —Chief Seattle
Section Five Table of Contents from Keys to the Open Gate:
Nothing Special, Ayya Khema
Meditations,
Purification Taking and Sending
Start Where You Are. Pema Chodron
Rituals, Diane Mariechlld
Learning from the Amish, Sue Bender
Homage to Ancestors. Lulsah Telsh
Compassion in Action. Ram Das and Mlrabal Bush
Random Acts of Kindness, Editors of Conari Press
Community, Teresa of Calcutta
"Selflessness," Vimala McClure
A Reflection on Fasting, Mary Collins, OSB
The Prophet on Fasting, Shaykh Fadhlalla Haeri
Kashrut, Judith Plaskow Shojin Cooking, Abbess Koei Hoshino
Harmony Through Macrobiotics, A talk with Vivian Eggers
Gardening, Louise Yeomans King
Breaking the Hold of Bad Habits and Developing Good Ones, Kimberley Snow
A Sufi Teacher, Irina Tweedie
Vedanta Convents, Swami Swahananda
Christian Science Healing, The Christian Science Publishing Society
Sweat Lodge, Susanne Fairclough
Peacekeeping, Dhyani Ywahoo
Contemplating Impermanence, Kimberley Snow
Helping Mother to Die, Terry Tempest Williams
Attend Your Own Funeral, Kimberley Snow
Bibliography