My youngest son is going to College for the first time. We leave to take him there
tomorrow. A day of packing
today. Next week the house will be
quiet. No Children.
This is a life’s passage. It is a loss, a grieving, a separation. How do I practice with this? I am so grateful that I know about
“practicing with it”. How would I
get by in this life full of sorrow and loss without my spiritual guidance. I don’t know. When life is hard, that is when our opportunities are ripe and our practices save us.
So here is how I am practicing with this sorrow:
1.
I allow myself to feel my feelings without
covering them up. I allow myself
to have the queasy feeling in my stomach, to cry, to have headaches. As Reb Anderson taught me when I asked
him how he was dealing with old age, He said, “I welcome it. I am generous towards it, I have patience” (Using the first two paramitas as his
guide).
2.
I, what I call “extend the tonglen.” I extend my sorrow to include all
beings who are having a similar sorrow.
So, in this case, millions of parents are letting go of their children. Some are letting them go to
kindergarten, some like me, at the end of the cycle, letting them go out into
the scary world without us. I am
one of millions. Somehow just
thinking that helps me reduce the “uniqueness of my suffering.” Every single parent in all generations
from time eternal have let go of their children.
3.
I pull up the great gathas and verses I have
studied in the past and start using them again.
Two examples:
Birth will end in death,
Youth will end in old age,
Wealth will end in loss
Meeting will end in separation
All things in cyclic existence are
transient and impermanent.
I have pulled out
Meeting will end in separation.
And I remind myself of this
sentence as I go thru the day.
And the verse above comes from the
5 Remembrances:
I am of the nature to grow old.
There is no way
to escape growing old.
I am of the nature to have
ill-health.
There is no way
to escape having ill-health.
I am of the nature to die.
There is no way
to escape death.
All that is dear to me and everyone I love are of the nature to change.
There is no escape being separated from
them.
My deeds are my closest
companions.
I am the
beneficiary of my deeds.
My deeds are the
ground on which I stand.
When we think of freedom or
enlightenment, we often think we are gaining something.
"Loss is enlightenment. Gain is delusion" - Dōgen
But as Dōgen has indicated actually the
letting go process involved in loss is the same process of “dropping off body
and mind”. We drop off our
self-centered thinking which concentrates on a self-centered feeling of loss,
and we join into the rhythm of cyclic existence without resistance. Things come and go.
Even the word “tathagata” which
is what Buddha called himself, is translated as “that which comes and that which
goes.” Or “the person who is beyond coming and going”.
We can contemplate the beautiful
equanimity phrase:
May I be at peace with the comings and goings or the ups and downs of
life.
Labels: 5 remembrances, Dōgen, equanimity, gathas, generosity, paramitas, parenting practice, patience, tathagata