With a Trembling Heart

It is the yearning for wholeness that enables transformation to happen.

Very soon I'll be going back to Kripalu to help lead an Opening the Heart Workshop again. This workshop is the last weekend before the winter solstice (December 14-16). I think of this time in November and December as "The Dark Run"- a time of decreased natural light, a time of turning inward, of watching, waiting and contemplation- a time to prepare for the increased light to come back to us.

I have often referred to the contrast in the "energy" of a Friday night at Kripalu compared to Sunday morning. Friday night, as I look around at our first circle of the workshop, I often see doubt, fear, excitement, apprehension as I look into people's faces. By Sunday morning, the transformation is very dramatic. The energy in the room is lighter, peaceful, less heavy, and in people's faces I see no hiding, only compassion and kindness.

I find myself asking what exactly is it than enables this striking transformation to happen in about forty hours with a group of strangers. It is true that there is a warm and welcoming atmosphere at Kripalu. It is true that the leaders of the workshop are experienced and the safety and love they help to create is sincere and real. It is true that the music helps gather us in together. But this still doesn't answer, for me, what it is that helps bring about such dramatic change so quickly.

There is a prayer that I love that goes something like this:

With all my heart have I gone out to seek You, And in going out, found You coming toward me.

I think the deeper answer about what causes such deep change at a workshop lies in this prayer: that it is not the singing or the welcoming or the building that, in themselves, transforms. Not really. I believe it is the yearning for wholeness that each participant brings, hesitantly, cautiously, with trembling heart, into the workshop on Friday. What we have, I think, at every workshop is a kind of biased sample. These are the brothers and sisters who have come because they yearn- they want serenity, they long to see kindness in a stranger's eyes. It is in the risk of "going out," of longing, of yearning that one hears the "echo," the answer that we are not alone. The key to the dramatic change is that when we enter that workshop space, we have all suffered and we yearn to be known, seen and embraced with our past suffering: we are willing to take a chance to connect with our deeper self.

It is the suffering that leads to the yearning, which leads to the risk to do something out of the ordinary - like coming to an experiential workshop in the Berkshire hills of Massachusetts with a roomful of people we've never seen before. It is easy, I think, to confuse the change agent and to give credit to "the workshop" or to the leaders or to "the place," but I think, truly, the real agent of change is carried into the workshop by each brave, trembling heart that dares to step into the extraordinary.

Just as the time of increased light at the start of the winter solstice would not be so yearned for without the Dark Run, so the opening of the heart would not be so powerful without the dark night of the soul that precedes it. In this time of increased light in the world, we wish you peacefulness of heart and we wish for each of us to come to the knowledge of our true selves. We are not alone- ever.

Come Alive

Becoming more loving to one another is the only answer I know to the violence and suffering in the world.

On Friday afternoon, December 14th about 3:30, I was at Kripalu setting up the circle for the Opening the Heart Workshop which would start about 7:30 that night. I was in the Mountain View Room, facing west, and the sun was streaming in the windows. I like going to Kripalu early on a workshop weekend, to hang out, have an iced drink, set up the circle, check the lighting, read, sit quietly. My mind was calm and focused on the participants who would be sitting on those backjacks in a few short hours.

Just after 3:30, my friend, Peter, who was on his way to help lead the workshop, called to tell me the heartbreaking news he'd heard on the radio about the murders in New Town, Connecticut. As my mind began to wrap itself around this unbearable news, I had a vague awareness that I'd stopped breathing. Then came the thoughts: "Oh God, not again! ... When, when will we have enough spine to stand up to gun lobbies and congressmen who are bought? ... How many more dollars need to be cut for providing seriously mentally ill people, before we realize how much damage we are doing? ..."

The thoughts came like an avalanche, released by the sudden shot of a loud gun. I watched my body continue to set up backjacks and pillows until a perfect circle was formed. Then I sat on one of the backjacks, breathed and let the circle begin to fill with the presence of 28 lives cut short in New Town. My heart began to beat as the circle continued to fill with twelve more souls killed in Aurora, Colorado; thirteen in Columbine; six at a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin; nine more souls entered the circle, killed in Manchester, Connecticut; seven more in Minneapolis this past year. The circle continued to fill, all the way back to our violent birth as a nation. I just sat, one beating heart, and I cried. No more thoughts, the mind finally still, the heart broken and aching. I cried til the crying stopped ...

I'm not big on t-shirts or messages on t-shirts. I will go out of my way during the rare times I dare to shop for clothes by myself, to buy clothes that have no visible label or message. I know, I know- it's basically the same kind of snobbery that leads people to buy labels and messages. Anyway, when I was at Omega a few years ago, I saw a t-shirt with a message that I liked enough to buy: "Don't ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive and do that. Because what the world needs are people who have come alive."

These words made me think of what Thich Nhat Hanh teaches: The foundations of one's being form the basis of one's actions. I believe what this great Zen master is talking about is his concept of "engaged Buddhism": before one can change the world for the good, one must open one's heart, still the mind and be in the present moment. This sometimes means bearing heartbreaking witness to deep suffering, as he did during the Vietnam War.

When I stopped the avalanche of thoughts and breathed and just attempted to sit with the broken heart, what became clearer to me in the moment was that I needed to do what I had come to Kripalu to do that weekend: to help people look into each other's eyes and see no difference- to be more compassionate and loving. So, I slowly got up from my cushion in the circle and saved the only thing I could save in that moment. I put tissue boxes around the circle, adjusted lighting, offered a prayer, blessed the souls in the center of the circle, bowed and waited quietly to welcome the first participants for the workshop.

Regrets

The best way to avoid regret is to do it now.

I read a list of things that people most regretted in their lives: not having traveled more, not having taken more risks, worrying too much about money and not enough about relationships. So, of course, I started doing my own R and R (review and regret). I wish I had tried more new things out of my comfort zone. I wish I had known how to forgive sooner. I wish I had been gentler on myself. I wish I had been less judgmental of others' failings. I wish I had enjoyed more sunrises. I wish I had worked harder at finding things to be grateful for every day.

It's a Monday morning, 7am and I am sitting with a friend. I should say, more specifically, that I am sitting for a friend and for his family. David died very unexpectedly last Friday. In my tradition, friends and loved ones sit with the body until burial so that the person who has died is never alone. I remember on Friday reading the e-mail: "We regret to inform you of the death of Dr. David M., father of Alan, Carolyn and Rachel; husband of Suzanne ..." I had to read it several times to make sure it said what I feared it did. David was my age, which, of course, starts a whole other exercise for the busy mind.

He was a member of my men's book club and I liked him a lot. I like the men in our book club, but I always thought: "David is the best of us." He always recommended the best books. He was the one who seemed to have discovered these reading treasures before the rest of us and so when he recommended a book, it was because he'd read it and loved it. He introduced us to the author Erik Larsen and his best book Devil in the White City. David knew about Stieg Larsson and his famous trilogy (Girl With the Dragon Tattoo) before most of us had heard of the books.

David was very thoughtful about what he wanted us to read and didn't want us to read. When the group decided on a book of fiction about the Holocaust, David quietly refused to read it, saying that the Holocaust was awful enough as non-fiction and he didn't need to put himself through made-up horror of the event. He didn't judge anyone else who chose differently.

I considered David a friend even though we didn't hang out or spend a lot of time together. I remember years ago he called me and asked to speak to me about something personal. I was surprised and more than happy to sit with him one night while he opened his heart about a heartbreaking rift with his daughter. I felt good that I could listen and offer things for him to think about.

I always felt that my wife and I should invite David and Suzanne for dinner because I knew it would be a good foursome. But I just never did. I also felt that there was more to David than he ended up showing you- that there was more of a story than you ever really knew about. And it turned out to be true. I never knew that he'd had a stroke about a year ago and I never knew he'd had a heart condition and was on blood thinners. He never spoke of it.

The things I knew about him, I liked. He was sensitive, smart, funny, loved by his wife and children, loved by his patients and respected by friends and community. He was a great dad, a good physician and I regret not being a better friend- not taking the time to know him more deeply.

But when I get up shortly from sitting for my friend, I will honor him by going out into the cold, gray morning, with no regrets, and being grateful beyond words for the beauty of it all.

My Religion

Why wait to practice kindness?

Friday March 15th was the first day that friends and family began to have an awareness that Sunil Trapathi was "missing." Sunil is an Indian- American student at Brown University in Providence. His parents live in Pennsylvania but they had been in Rhode Island to help in the heartbreaking search for their son. Sunil has an older brother and sister who have been working tirelessly in and around Providence hanging pictures on store fronts, on telephone poles and in meeting places. They describe him as a wonderful brother who had been on a medical leave of absence from Brown because he was struggling with depression. The day before he was listed as missing, he spoke to his grandmother and aunt, who both love him. Over the past six weeks, a whole community came to love him. On Facebook, people, many who'd never met Sunil, sent messages of love written on a left hand or a right hand: "Sunil, do not give up hope"; "You are not alone"; "I, too, have suffered in the past"; "Don't give up, you are loved." The fact that a whole community could come together, to help search and to help send love and relieve suffering made an impression on me.

One night, as my wife and I left a restaurant on Thayer Street near Brown, we saw Sunil's smiling face on a telephone pole and we felt an ache in our hearts for his family. Many in the community came to meet Sunil's family when they knocked on doors to ask if their son, Sunil, had been seen. All leads came to nothing until a Brown student, a rower, found Sunil's body in the Seekonk River. Yes, there was some closure, but the circle of friends and kind caring souls turned their attention from searching to comforting. There was so much compassionate caring and love. People who were strangers now had a common bond and would smile and talk to one another....

The news reports said it was "like no other week in the history of Boston." Lockdowns, late night shootouts, grenades and police chases. Murder, senseless deaths and horrible injuries of people wanting to simply enjoy a beautiful spring day and an annual tradition of the Boston Marathon. The word that witnesses kept repeating was "surreal" which means "having an oddly dreamlike quality." They were referring not just to the death, horror and maiming, but to acts of incredible heroism and kindness: people running toward the explosions to get the wounded medical help or simply to apply a tourniquet. Only minutes before the explosions, these people were strangers, who may well not have smiled at each other in passing or said hello, were now connected in a life and death drama.

So I wondered why many of us wait for an excuse or a disaster in order to be kind. Why not practice it in some small way right now: letting a driver go ahead of us instead of getting home fourteen seconds early; an offer in the parking lot to help an older shopper load their car with bags; a smile as we walk past someone on the street. Why wait? Do you remember how connected and friendly so many of us felt after 9/11? The Dalai Lama once said, when asked what his religion was: kindness. Maybe we could practice that religion when it's not a life or death matter, because, in truth, in many ways, it is a matter of life and death.

Creating Godness

Redemption happens when we open a dark place to the light.

Though I've only seen Sam and Jenny together in my office for a short while, I had seen Sam alone for almost three years. He had been married before, and Sam's life had not been an easy one. It may have been blessed, probably was, but it was one of those lives where you need to wait a whole long time before you say "Wow! it was hard to see those ragged early years as anything but suffering, but now I see how it all fits together."

Perhaps the most painful chapter of Sam's story was that he lost a child- his only daughter (two other sons). I really liked Sam a lot and my heart ached for all the ways his life seemed to be unfair- too jagged. Then he met Jenny: "She's kind, Jon, and she makes me laugh. She's pretty and she really loves me. Me! Can you believe it?" They loved each other very much but Sam began to see some things he hadn't seen during the months their closeness and love grew.

The main issue seemed to be around his 'leaving'. It might be for bowling night or a business meeting, but he noticed she would become unreasonably irritable. Even she would admit, with some time to gain perspective, that her behavior was reactive and even blaming of Sam. I asked her to tell me about her dad. She told me her parents divorced when she was about eleven and it was one of those ugly, blood-on-the-walls divorce that took hostages of anyone on the battlefield. Jenny said "My mother turned me against my father." I asked her to tell me more because I sensed there was more. Her eyes began to fill as she told me that she could still remember as "clear as if it was yesterday," when she screamed at her dad that she never wanted to see him again and she recalled the broken look on his face as she slammed her bedroom door in his face, and refused to open it. Out of loyalty to her mom, Jenny did not speak to her father again, as he died of a sudden massive heart attack less than three years later.

By now she was sobbing and trying to talk to him through the almost thirty years that had passed. "I'm so sorry Daddy...." I asked her to close her eyes and I asked Sam to sit directly in front of her. With Jenny's eyes closed, I asked her to remember her dad's younger face, and to bring it into sharp focus as she remembered him that last day. Tears fell down her face. I asked her to see her father's face when she opened her eyes. ... And she did. "Daddy I miss you. I'm so sorry ..." Jenny emptied her heart and when she was done, I asked her to breathe and listen to her dad's voice coming through Sam. I knew that Sam had lost a daughter, but Jenny didn't know the details because Sam had only ever talked about them in my office. His daughter was sixteen and overdosed on drugs and he never had a chance to say good-bye to his "little girl"- until now. He looked at Jenny and saw his daughter's face and he said "I was always with you. I never left. And I will always be with you. I miss you, too, and I will always love you so very much. What I need you to hear now is that I will never leave you and that there is nothing to forgive." By now, the tears were falling from Sam's eyes, too, as well as mine and I thought "If we don't stop this soon, we're gonna be ankle-deep from all the tears." But they were good tears, healing waters....