Sunflowers

Meditation for Monday, August 1: Claim something in nature as your own.

My maternal grandmother and I have claimed two recurring events in nature as ours: the first is a certain kind of rain that comes on a wind in summer, and the second is an almost brashly bright, moonlit night.

When I visit her there will be times when she will say, "it is our kind of rain today," or, "look up and see our moon." I feel such profound love from her in these moments.

We do not claim the rain or the moonlight as owners of objects to consume, rather, we claim them as lovers of beauty taking in the sacred.

Vincent Van Gogh, known for the fierce energy of his paintings, once said,

"The sunflower is mine, in a way."

Van Gogh's paintings are a testament that sunflowers and the night sky were so deeply his. In claiming them as sacred for himself,  he then gave them back to the world in a way only he could.

I would challenge you to claim something in nature as Van Gogh did sunflowers. When we take in something beautiful and sacred as though it is ours alone, the experience connects us to the eternal. Whatever happens in us as a result of that connection, we can return to others. If the world is indeed broken, perhaps this is one way that we can begin to repair it.

Spiritual Exercises

Meditation for Sunday, July 31:  Care for your spirit with play. And shake those cherry blossoms. 

St. Ignatius of Loyola is one of the most famous Catholic reformers of the 16th century because he founded the Society of Jesus, or Jesuits. The Jesuits were so successful partly because of his Spiritual Exercises, a book which he wrote for lay and clerical men and women wanting to pursue a more devout, Catholic life.

Loyola's book set out a rigorous, daily approach to prayer that involved incessant list-making and tallying the times one had sinful thoughts or behavior throughout the day. This book served as a manual for Jesuit missionaries who spread like wildfire through the Americas, Africa and Asia from the 16th-18th centuries.

Some people approach running the way St. Ignatius approached prayer -- in a rigorous and disciplined manner. I am the opposite. I actually run similar to how I pray, which is in a more spontaneous and inspired fashion. I'm not advocating that one way of running is better than another, and I might become a more methodical runner some day. Currently though, while I know that I want to run frequently, I don't plan for how far, or how long.

What I do think we need as runners and human beings is more time set aside for play. So even if you are fiercely methodical about your running, don't forget to work in a little playful running once in awhile.

Here's a haiku I found today that I would like to offer as a runner's prayer:

Looking over my shoulder
my behind was covered
with cherry blossoms.

The haiku was written by one of my own spiritual guides, Allen Ginsberg, who studied zen poetry. May his memory be for a blessing. Now with that prayer in mind, dear reader, go forth and shake your cherry blossoms, because you are beautifully and wonderfully made. :)

The Unfathomable Path

Meditation for Saturday, July 30: Let the path make you radiant.

I'm posting the meditation for tomorrow early because I'm going offline for the evening. Tomorrow's meditation comes from an ancient book of Chinese wisdom, the Tao Te Ching.

From Chapter 21:

The Tao is dark and unfathomable.
How can it make her radiant?
Because she lets it.

The Chinese character 道 (Tao) means "Way," and is used in this text to refer to the nameless, eternal Way of all nature and life. The Way is unfathomable, with no end, no definition, yet it abides in all living things. When we let ourselves wander without preconceived notions, we find this Way.

When we run, where the path leads is less important than finding it within, feeling in sync with it. It may be rugged, with dark moments, but if we endure with it, it will make us radiant. When you feel the glow after accomplishing a particularly challenging run, consider it a blessing from the eternal!

Road to the Divine

Meditation for Friday, July 29: Follow your senses

Running can be humbling, and it was for me today. I ran farther than I ever have before, but in the last mile, I developed a side stitch that almost made me end the run. Fortunately, I found the other side of the pain and made it through. When I finished, I smiled.

Novice zen monks entering a monastery are tasked with menial jobs, usually washing the floors. In some monasteries, it is back-breaking work requiring bending over and running back and forth pressing a wet sponge to the ground. The station is lowly, the pain piercing, and the monks have to learn how to understand it as something temporary. The Buddha taught that everything is impermanent, including pain.

In his diary, The Drowned Book (trans. by Coleman Barks), 13th-century Sufi mystic Bauhauddin, the father of Rumi, stresses the importance of being aware of your senses. Like the Buddha, Bauhauddin believed in the impermanence of pain. Being a mystic, he also saw the senses as the ultimate road to the divine.

From The Drowned Book, Book 1, verse 10:

I see the essence of being alive as water flowing from the invisible to here, and then back to there. My senses know they came from nowhere and will go back to nowhere. I recognize the one step from existence to non and from nonexistence to here. When I deeply know my senses, I feel in them the way to God and the purpose of living.

Where the Sacred Resides

Meditation for Thursday, July 28: Find and claim your sanctuary.

Yesterday, I ran by a church and noticed the word "Sanctuary" on the sign. I've seen the sign hundreds of times, but this is the first time that I have held on to that word. I like etymologies, so I looked it up.

The original meaning is "sacred room," a hidden chamber where the holy resides. By the 1500s, people in England were also using it to mean "refuge."

One reason some of us enjoy running is because we find sanctuary in the outdoors. Still, there are 100-degree days and snowstorms, and other times when we have to fight the elements.

Because we also dwell deeply in and contend mightly with our bodies and our psyches, perhaps there are hidden sanctuaries there. What if we considered very literally that the chambers of the heart were sacred rooms? How would we feel, then, to hear it beat?

I have always appreciated how yoga instructors encourage my mind-body awareness by asking me to think of my body in ways I normally wouldn't; for example, to visualize my spine lengthening and my breath traveling from the top of my head to my toes. Yoga is based on the principle that heat is required to unite parts of the body back to the whole, divine self, which includes the mind. To practice yoga is to join the parts together, to build the Sanctuary with a capital S: your original Self.

Here is a poem exploring the meaning of finding sanctuary, and how elusive it can be.

"Sanctuary"

People pray to each other. The way I say "you" to someone else,
respectfully, intimately, desperately. The way someone says
"you" to me, hopefully, expectantly, intensely ...
—Huub Oosterhuis

You who I don’t know I don’t know how to talk to you

—What is it like for you there?

Here ... well, wanting solitude; and talk; friendship—
The uses of solitude. To imagine; to hear.
Learning braille. To imagine other solitudes.
But they will not be mine;
to wait, in the quiet; not to scatter the voices—

What are you afraid of?

What will happen. All this leaving. And meetings, yes. But death.
What happens when you die?

“... not scatter the voices,”

Drown out. Not make a house, out of my own words. To be quiet in
another throat; other eyes; listen for what it is like there. What
word. What silence. Allowing. Uncertain: to drift, in the
restlessness ... Repose. To run like water—

What is it like there, right now?

Listen: the crowding of the street; the room. Everyone hunches in
against the crowding; holding their breath: against dread.

What do you dread?

What happens when you die?

What do you dread, in this room, now?

Not listening. Now. Not watching. Safe inside my own skin.
To die, not having listened. Not having asked ... To have scattered
life.

Yes I know: the thread you have to keep finding, over again, to
follow it back to life; I know. Impossible, sometimes.

--Jean Valentine

Who We Are

Whether your run today is fast or slow, good or bad, press on.

The major philosophical message of the Bhagavad Gita, one of the most beloved Hindu scriptures, can be summed up in the following line from Shakespeare's Macbeth:

"Fair is foul, and foul is fair"
-Act 1, Scene 1

In the Bhagavad Gita, Lord Krishna reveals himself as the Godhead to a warrior in anguish. The crux of what Krishna explains to the warrior is that he must perform his duty with no attachment to the outcome. He must fight because he is a fighter.

Whether the fight is fair or foul is of no matter; in fact, "fair" and "foul" are both illusions. The only reality that exists is the Ultimate Reality -- which is eternally One, transcending all categories. The meaning of life is to seek and find it.

We have that Reality inside of us. The Islamic mystic poet Rumi writes of it as a field:

"Out beyond ideas of wrong-doing and right-doing there is a field. I will meet you there."

Similar to Rumi, medieval Christian mystic, ecologist, and musician Hildegard von Bingen describes eternal reality as the "greenness." When we feel ourselves, our breath, and our energy in sync with nature, we arrive there.

Krishna, Rumi and Hildegard summon us to do whatever we can in the space of our little lives -- in our fields, in our fighting, in our actions, and in our hearts -- to submit to the Great Mystery. In so doing, we will find ourselves.

Should our egos get too involved in our running, we'll always be struggling with the outcomes of our performance. Instead, we should run for the sake of running, because that is who we are. Implicit in the sound of our heartbeat and breath is that we are echoing a universal rhythm.

I am a slow runner. At my pace, I would never win a race. On days when I can accept this, I feel like I can run forever. On days when I want to be faster, I lose my focus and get frustrated. Either way, I run. My blood circulates with vitality. The grass grows, and the world moves on.

The Dust We Eat

I went running a couple of days ago and felt a new kind of solitude. I was the only person out on the course because it was almost 100 degrees. My face felt as though it might melt away from the pavement's radiating heat. I tried to ignore the heat and dust, but ultimately, I recognized that I am mortal, and I cut my run in half.

Here's a meditation by one of my favorite poets for those of us who are running outside in this summer season. It reminds me of a zen poem about a monk who finds enlightenment while gazing at peach blossoms. Whether it be in peach blossoms or on dusty roads, may we find peace wherever we can.

"From Blossoms"

From blossoms comes
this brown paper bag of peaches
we bought from the boy
at the bend in the road where we turned toward
signs painted Peaches.

From laden boughs, from hands,
from sweet fellowship in the bins,
comes nectar at the roadside, succulent
peaches we devour, dusty skin and all,
comes the familiar dust of summer, dust we eat.

O, to take what we love inside,
to carry within us an orchard, to eat
not only the skin, but the shade,
not only the sugar, but the days, to hold
the fruit in our hands, adore it, then bite into
the round jubilance of peach.

There are days we live
as if death were nowhere
in the background; from joy
to joy to joy, from wing to wing,
from blossom to blossom to
impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.

- Li-Young Lee