I love this one...hope you all get something from it too.
Fear and Fearlessless: Curiosity, A Sponge for Terror
As an athletic, strong woman, my fearlessness was physically based. My
body was utterly reliable, and I felt a young persons invincibility.
Back then I had no hesitation in tight situations: planting my 5'2
frame firmly between a man on the street and the woman he had just
slapped. No fear. When two teenaged girls came together to block my
progress up the street as a racial challenge -- whose neighborhood is
this anyway? -- I had decided to cross the street as the better part of
valor, but my brash little body surprised me. This is MY
neighborhood too!" I crashed through their locked-arm barricade, then
ran like hell, momentary triumph over fear pounding through my temples.
Oh, what a strong little body it was, and its surging vitality,
affirmed through muscle and nerve fiber that had thus far proven itself
infallible, engendered the stoutness of the heart that beat within it!
So imagine the terror of losing it all and not slowly over time like we
all do as we age, but swiftly, mercilessly, watching ability after
ability fall away like so many loose hairs. I was 35 years old, living
at Green Gulch Farm, a Marin County wing of the San Francisco Zen
Center. It took four months for me to lose everything that meant
anything to me: my strong, energetic body; my ability to achieve
whatever I focused on and win the admiration of others for it; my
pleasure in being a sexually attractive woman; my joy in bestowing the
sweet attentions that mark a nurturing mother; my ability to do the
required Zen training practices which were the purpose of living in the
community at Green Gulch; and perhaps most tellingly, my body-as-slave
mentality -- my assumption that my body was ready and able to perform
whatever function I imposed upon it without resistance. Furthermore, I
was isolated by the pain that overwhelmed every movement, by the
desperate terror that also frightened everyone else who came into my
panicked presence, and the consuming effort I had to make to do any
little task -- like get up from a chair or pick up a cup of tea. Even
the breeze became a formidable antagonist.
I was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis, a very painful and crippling
disease, which had also afflicted my mother. Eventually I couldn't
dress myself, hold the phone receiver, or get up from the toilet by
myself. Because this all happened so rapidly, within a few months'
time, I was in a constant state of denial, convinced as each function
disappeared that the next morning would see its return. My terror was
so overwhelming that I couldn't tolerate more than a split-second
intimation of it. Whenever the reality of what I appeared to be facing
– severe disability -- popped unbidden into my mind, I desperately
willed my deteriorating body to perform its next task. You Must, I commanded it; You Will. If
my body couldn't work, what would happen to me? If I couldn't pull my
own weight, who would take care of me? I had always lived with the
illusion that I was self-sufficient, helpful to others but ultimately
independent. I couldn't change my modus this fast. Because of my
initial denial, no one knew how bad it was getting or what exactly to
do for me. I had my 3-year-old buttoning my buttons and tying my shoes
in the privacy of my room.
This flight from terror
ended abruptly when my son woke me in the middle of the night. He was
crying. His pajamas were wet with vomit. "I'm sick, Mommie," he said.
"I threw up." I tried to move my body, to lift it out of the bed, but
failed. I couldn't free myself from the bedcovers and when I tried to
reach the edge of the bed and pull away from the sheets, I was too weak
to rise to a sitting position. "Honey, take off your pajamas and wash
your face in the bathroom," I said to my child. "Pull the dirty sheets
off of your bed and go back to sleep." I heard him carry out my
instructions and get into his bed. I lay in my own narrow bed, hearing
him sob himself to sleep, and prayed to die. Denial was no longer
possible. Members of the community took over the care of my son and
myself.
SSeven years I had sat on a black cushion pursuing enlightenment. Seven
years, thousands of hours of zazen and maybe thirty sesshins (long
sittings of several days). To no apparent avail. I was completely
overcome by unremitting pain, terror and despair.
Swept up by the power of the pain, overwhelmed and consumed by it, at
first I couldn't feel anything else. But forced to completely surrender
to the physicality of my existence, moment after moment, I eventually
discovered that there were experiences in my body besides the pain –
and not all of them unpleasant. My whole world consisted of my body and
its sensations, my bed and its coverings, my room and its furnishings.
Confined to this simple but not offensive company, I began to notice
each of these things had its own eccentricities. Besides the cracks in
the paint around the windowsill, there were the gurgles and hums of an
inhabited apartment building; subtle changes in the shadows on the wall
as the day passed; the temperature differences as the strident morning
sun made the old walls brilliant and then receded in the afternoon; the
occasional contours of a familiar face over my own looking down at me.
I found my world as intricate, as interesting as it had ever been, just
on a much more subtle level. I kept telling myself, this must be the
world of babies and animals. Everything is fresh and fascinating.
And so I moved from hoping every morning to find myself awaking from a
bad dream, to realizing that this room and its contents were the only
life I had. And this was the body I had to live it with. So I started
waking up ready to fully live this specific life, and get acquainted
with what was in many respects a new body every day. I started the day
asking, what part of my body works today? What can I do with the part
that works? That was thrilling to me, day-planning on such a primitive
level. As I settled into my new life and its particularities, curiosity
replaced fear as my primary ground of being. I wanted to know every
little detail about my world. And this was because I was beginning to
actually take refuge -- from despair and hopelessness -- in every
aspect and feature of my existence.
I was impressed with the power of the minutiae of my daily life to act
as a sponge for my terror. Later, as I began to gain strength and spend
more time out of bed, I applied the same principle to movement and took
refuge in my activity itself. The practice of doing each thing for its
own sake, the staple of Zen training, had mostly eluded me as a
striving Zen student. I could rarely put aside my preoccupation with my
projected achievement, the purpose of my efforts. But now, living in
the vibrancy of the sensual present and seeing it clearly as my most
viable source of comfort and solace, I did not want to return to my
habit of push and pursuit, always onto the next reason for living, be
it enlightenment or better housing at Green Gulch. Now I preferred to
stay right here, exactly here. I lost my sense that there was something
special or tragic about my circumstances. It was just my life, day in
and day out.
This kind of surrender to and fascination with, the circumstances of my
own life, didn't feel like resignation, but rather a profound and
complete acceptance of my place in the world. This is not a passive
kind of acceptance, but one that is active, creative, intelligent,
complete vulnerability to life. This openness sometimes went on at the
same time that I was railing against my pain and searching for ways to
stop it. They don't hinder each other: completely accepting your
suffering and looking for ways to end it. They are both active, engaged
encounters with our life. If we can't be speedy and productive, if it
takes all our attention and focus to put on our clothes in the morning,
we must be like a turtle climbing its way out of a sandy pit:
implacable, endlessly patient, finding our true home in our activity
itself as well as the goal our activity precedes.
We practitioners venerate the present moment. But when the present
moment doesn't feel beautiful and flowing, like leaves changing with
the seasons, we get confused. When it just means wrenching pain and
despair, we want to move on. But it turns out that actually
experiencing despair is radically different from visualizing it
beforehand with fear and deciding you can't face it. When it's actually
true that the past is gone forever and the future you can imagine is
even bleaker than this moment, you're more willing to sink into now. I
took refuge in my straightforward activity, my slow, deliberate
motions, and did not attach to any results, simply because I couldn't
bear any more loss, or even the possibility of loss. I never thought
"someday I will be well again" because that thought would have been
unbearable. I never allowed my mind to wander back to the strong body I
had lost because that image involved unendurable pain. So I stayed in
my breath and my motion, afraid at first to look to the right or to the
left. When I became well enough to interact, my contacts with people
took place on the same primitive level. Standing there with someone,
sharing their breath, feeling them permeate my chest and belly, I
stayed in their company until some restlessness impelled me to move on.
This made interaction very immediate, very real.
And then one day, contemplating a return to formal practice, I realized
what I'd been doing all along is taking the heralded refuge in Buddha,
Dharma and Sangha. I'd always read that taking refuge in Buddha, Dharma
and Sangha meant giving up your attachment to basic security in the
form of those habitual reassuring thought patterns we usually take up
when we're shaky (I'm smart or I have an IRA or a spouse or whatever),
and being willing to shift to a breath-based reality where everything
rises and passes away (Right View). With my basic security relegated to
the fantasies of a past life, I understood that the Ancients didn't
have anything more to work with than we do. They had their own bodies,
their own delusions, their own habits and opinions. And they tried lots
of spiritual trips, just like we can in the Bay Area, and after they
ran through all those trips, they finally settled on their own minds as
the source of their suffering and ultimately managed to to reject dogma
and spiritual materialism as refuges and experience life directly.
BBy taking refuge in the Dharma, I mean that I had found a path for
myself, my very own original path, like Buddha did. I didn't think mine
was a Zen path. In my narrowness, I assumed Zen meant sitting in zazen
posture and only sitting in zazen posture – but it turned out to be an
equally engaging path, and it was basically all I had in the way of
solace. And on that path, I was able to cultivate the ability to relate
to my immediate experience, all of it. And on that path, I evolved an
attitude of curiosity and attention that subjugated my terror. No
longer did I distinguish between the sacred objects that should be
accorded mindful attention and the secular things that can be ignored
or slammed. Nothing was a waste of time; all of life was a fertile
situation. The ultimate consolation for my abandonment by
goal-orientation was the richness and shimmering uniqueness of
everything.
BBy taking refuge in the Sangha, I mean I felt companionable with my
fellow refugees who were confused and terrified like me wherever I
found them: in my room, on the street, in stores, in the zendo. The
sangha is where you experiment with being your real self, where you get
your arrogance or delusions challenged, where you ask for and give
support. The Zen Center sangha encouraged my efforts by putting a
"practice" umbrella over my head, inviting me to speak and write about
my experiences.
All this took place twenty-plus years ago. My disability is quite
relative now, as my friends age. Fear and sorrow are familiar
companions in my everyday, now eventful, life. An on-going practice
that has enabled me to integrate them for decades is that of turning my
daily life tasks into little rituals. By bringing my toothbrush and my
dishes, my microwave, and my car into my conscious life as objects to
be sanctified by my close attention, I feel their tangible support and
their sometimes rather charming idiosyncrasies.
For instance, I have difficulty dressing. My arthritic shoulders,
elbows and fingers flinch from the stretching, tugging and tying
required to present oneself fully clothed to the world. But I'm not and
never have been a utilitarian dresser. Velcro might solve my problem,
but it's out of the question. I'm the kind of person who loves and
appreciates the fine art of asymmetrical hems, darts, double-stitched
denim seams, linings in jackets and bias-cut skirts. My throat catches
at the flutter of silk in the breeze. My underwear is adorned with lace
and embroidered flowers. Instead of hurrying to dress and becoming
frustrated by how difficult it is to pull up socks, put on shoes, and
button up blouses, I make it a reassuring and well-loved morning
ritual: I lay out all the clothes on the sun-drenched couch, and sit in
the morning sun as I dress, feeling its comfort, putting on each lovely
article one at a time, feeling the temperature changes associated with
covering my body, noticing the darts and seams and insets that search
out the topography of my body and make my clothes fit me. Sorrow
changes when it encounters the spaciousness -- the holiness -- afforded
by very close attention. Most physical tasks that I do, like cleaning
and cooking, have taken on this ceremonial cast. What cultivating
attention to detail introduces is spaciousness, space around thoughts
and activities that allows you to live a rich and satisfying life right
in the middle of misery.
BIOGRAPHY:
Darlene Cohen, M.A., LMT, was ordained as a zen priest in 1999.
Developing rheumatoid arthritis in her seventh year of Zen practice led
her to explore the potential of her meditation training to address
chronic pain and catastrophic situation. She has written two books on
living with pain and using the tasks of everyday life to ease pain,
with particular emphasis on the relationship between suffering and
delight and how they might become more fluid in our own experience. She
currently works with pain sufferers in Sonoma County, CA.
-- An article by Darlene Cohen which appeared in Inquiring Mind, Spring, 2003.
Copyright ArthritisInsight.com