First, a note for Paid Subscribers.
Our next live gathering is on May 7th, 12pm Eastern, a week from today, to share practices of simplification, practical and relevant; our connection link is in the subscribers chat and will be in next week’s post.
Second, a note for all.
Launching a course with dear friend and teacher Alberto Villoldo. Uniting the traditions of yoga and shamanism, both intellectually and in practice, this course offers daily teachings for almost two months, several yoga sequences, meditations, a beautiful guide and other gifts, designed to support you in your studies.
Reviews are full of thankfulness, from both students and teachers, citing efficacy and resonance for your spiritual formation as well as your professional offerings. And this is a dream coming true for me.
Explore with us: Yoga, Power and Spirit.
One final note before we begin today’s post (with nervousness and excitement):
You may now officially pre-order my new book, Hold Nothing, coming this fall from Shambhala Publications. Pre-order to access wonderful gifts, including a Hold Nothing Guidebook I’m creating for you, and special sessions to be announced soon.
Open for all to listen and comment, this final post of poetry month explores the crucible and safety of solid friendship.
Having just completed our weeks at Upaya Zen Center, best friend Erin and I find ourselves feeling connected to ourselves, to each other, to the field of practice—realizing that friendship thrives even in silence.
For context: Erin lost her entire home and all of her belongings and physical manifestations of memory in the fires in Los Angeles. If you’ve donated to her, thank you. She came with me to Spring Practice Period at Upaya in the aftermath, choosing to commit herself to practice.
Her realizations have been significant, some of which she shares with us in this week’s audio. She’s a source of wisdom; this week she said that many of the teachings in this life come with experiencing what we don’t want to continue. Amen.
And also, that discomfort is a must if we wish to grow.
And that our devotion is contagious.
And invaluable shelter is found in consciously-wrought friendship.
Welcome in. Pour yourself a cup of tea and sit with us—you’ll hear a long pause when we’re both crying. Thank you in advance for staying with our silence.
Here we are on a personal afternoon at Upaya, raw and relatively quiet.
As you listen to the audio above, prompts for you.
Have you ever required time in Nature in order to move through deep waves of grief?
Have you ever felt a sadness that attuned you more deeply to an experience of presence, reverence?
This week’s readings.
First, from Thich Nhat Hanh.
When someone holds up a flower and shows it to you, he wants you to see it. If you keep thinking, you miss the flower. The person who was not thinking, who was just himself, was able to encounter the flower in depth, and he smiled.
That is the problem of life. If we are not fully ourselves, truly in the present moment, we miss everything. —Thich Nhat Hanh
For context: In a Buddhist teaching, Buddha Shakyamuni held an udumbara flower, said to bloom only once every three thousand years, at which point his disciple Mahakashyapa received a direct mind-to-mind transmission of the Dharma.
next, from Rosemerry.
Ways to Open
There’s the lilac way, impulsive,
shrugging out of hard bud scales
while the nights are still cold,
then flooding the world
with the sweet perfume of vulnerability.
Or the way a housefly opens its wings,
almost mechanical,
prompted by a pulse that triggers
marionette-like pulleys and hinges.
(with all due respect to the poet,
this next stanza i’m leaving out in the second read,
to respect those in recovery, including me)
There’s the wine way, sensual, responsive
to air, like how a glass of sauvignon blanc
opens into a meadow with a fresh cut path
through tall green grass with wet stones,
flanked by asparagus and nettles.
I am thinking now, of how tightly I’ve closed
my mind around a certain thought.
How impossible the unclenching seems,
though all around me are proofs
of how naturally things might open—
open the way a child will open his hand
to his mother when he desperately wants to be held.
Open the way a sky does when afternoon clouds
evaporate and all that is left is blue.
Open the way a life does when,
through what grace, we learn again
we can forgive.
—Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
And from Erin, which she sent to me just after we recorded.
Natural
These nails, this hair, this coming of age
The fire
The fear
The loss
The questions
The community
The grief
The meditations
The stillness
The waves
The emotion
The expression
The devotion
The nurturing
The guidance
The captivating silence
The families
The donations
The accommodations
The love
The support
The presence
The boundaries
The groundlessness invitation
One might think that natural is easy …
For me… a journey of acceptance, impermanence and patience
—Erin Castellino
Here’s Erin’s Venmo if you’re called to contribute to her recovery.
Welcome to Holding Nothing; thank you for being here. If you choose a paid subscription, you’ll have access to the entire archives, be able to comment on all posts, and attend our monthly Live Gatherings, during which we have talks, writing, learning and discussion time.
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Thank you for your presence here.
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