A Very Narrow Bridge

The world is a very narrow bridge; the important thing is not to be afraid. ~Nachman of Breslov

Category: Mindfulness

July 30, 2013

Benno U’veini

I was talking to Benno a while ago. Here’s some of what we said:

Benno:  Can we talk about being disciplined?

Harry: Yep.

More highlights:

“We are taught that being disciplined is about doing the things we don’t want to do, and that it’s unpleasant.”

“I am struggling with what I want vs. what I am willing to do about it…and I realized this morning that being disciplined (for me) has more to do with being thoughtful, and less about denying myself something.”

“A Lenten discipline is about being thoughtful. Not about self-denial. We make choices…we agree to those choices. That is discipline.”

“Throughout the year, we take some things on, and give things up. We make choices, mindfully.”

“I am struggling with the ‘agree to those choices’ part.”

“I am in control. I have made my choice–I can be angry at [the situation], or I can just be myself with an open heart. I have agreed to the choice.

I can also say “No” throughout my day/week/month/year. Or to respond to requests with a suggestion for something I feel would serve the project—or whatever—better.”

“I just have to hold myself to my agreements, like walking more, better, or accept that they aren’t working and make a new agreement with [myself]; if walking’s not what [I] need, what could I do instead?”

This week we read Parshat Re’eh (Devarim [Deuteronomy] 11:26 – 16:17).

It begins:

.רְאֵה, אָנֹכִי נֹתֵן לִפְנֵיכֶם–הַיּוֹם:  בְּרָכָה, וּקְלָלָה

Re’eh anochi notein lifneichem hayom brachah u’klalah.

“See, I give you today a blessing and a curse.”

We have choices. The parsha (Torah portion) continues (and I’m just going to translate and sort of paraphrase it):

A blessing if you will listen [for] the connection to God, which I explain to you today. A curse if you do not listen [for] the connection to God and turn away from the Path which I explain to you today…

We can choose what we want to do. We can listen for those connections, or we can ignore them.

But we need to accept our choices and live with the consequences.

The parsha goes on to give 55 mitzvot, which is kind of a lot. Actually, it’s definitely a lot if you think about them as commandments. When I was taking liberties in my translation, I used the word “connections” for mitzvot. You can see where I learned that here.

55 seems like a lot.

But.

Discipline isn’t about being forced to do things we don’t want to do, or not to do things we really want to do. It’s about mindfully making choices and accepting what will come from them. Blessings…or curses.

It’s really 55 opportunities for mindful connection. To yourself, to the community, to God. That’s the practice.  That’s why I love being Jewish.

I’m incredibly lucky to have my Episcopalian friend to teach me Torah.

Oh, the title for this post is a pun on “Beino u’veini” which means “between him and me.” I didn’t make the pun and I can’t take credit for it.

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July 25, 2013

Cowboy Up

Last week we read, in Vaetchanan (Devarim [Deuteronomy] 3:23 – 7:11), about Moshe’s plea to God to forgive him enough to allow him to enter the Land—just for a look around.

God won’t be moved. The answer is no. The answer is actually:

רַב-לָךְ–אַל-תּוֹסֶף דַּבֵּר אֵלַי עוֹד, בַּדָּבָר הַזֶּה

Rav-lach–al tosef daber alai od badavar hazeh! (You have enough! Don’t speak to me about this any more!) (Devarim 3:26)

And that’s that.

Sorry. It’s just not going to happen.

This week, in Eichev (Devarim [Deuteronomy] 7:12 – 11:25), it’s time to see what the people are all about.

When they enter the land, will they be scared? Will they turn to other gods? When they experience abundance, will they forget that they didn’t do it all on their own? Will they decide they’re special? Entitled?

Will they be able to tap into the fierceness necessary, not only to conquer, but to continue to live their lives with discipline and authenticity?

What are they made of, anyway?

Moshe thinks he knows, and he’s not at all happy.

Moshe. Rejected Moshe. Moshe who got what he’s getting. Who shouldn’t bring it up again. Hurt Moshe. Moshe who’s read ahead and knows what’s coming.

Moshe who had to intercede on the people’s behalf so many times. Who fasted for 40 days–twice (and at his age) in order to receive the Torah. Who’s already buried his sister and his brother.

That Moshe.

That’s the Moshe who has to go before these people and tell them, in effect, that it’s time for them to cowboy up. These people who’ve been a pain in the ass from the first day he met them.

And then.

Then something amazing happens. Because we find out how they are going to accomplish that:

וּמַלְתֶּם, אֵת עָרְלַת לְבַבְכֶם; וְעָרְפְּכֶם–לֹא תַקְשׁוּ, עוֹד

U’maltem et arlat l’vavchem, v’arpechem lo takshu od. (Devarim 10:16)

Want to know how you’re going to grow up? To let that cowboy out? You’re going to open your heart and stop being stiff-necked and stubborn.

Know why that works?

Because you’re going to get hurt. That open heart is going to be broken.

You know what happens then? You learn that heartbreak isn’t the end of the world. And if you loosen your neck, if you stop stubbornly clinging to the idea that you deserve more, you’re going to realize that what you got actually is enough.

Rav-lach isn’t just “you have enough,” it’s “you have a lot.”

I need to remember this. I need to remember to open my heart and accept the abundance I have been given; the fierceness is always there.

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July 15, 2013

What are you waiting for?

“What are you waiting for, Tisha B’Ab?”

My dad loves that expression. As I think about it, I’ve never heard anyone else say it. Maybe he got it from my grandfather. I don’t know. I’m not entirely sure he’s ever really considered the deep meaning of Tisha B’Av. That’s fine—it’s not his thing.

For better or for worse, it’s my thing. I suppose that’s why I’m writing this less than three hours before I have to be at the synagogue to listen to the book of Eicha being read and to begin my long fast. What I really should be doing is eating a light meal and drinking a lot of water. This is going to be a quick one—there will be typos.

I talked about Tisha B’Av last year, so I’m only going to recap:

Tisha B’Av (the ninth day of the month of Av) is a day of mourning and a fast day commemorating a series of tragedies that have struck the Jewish people throughout our history.

I don’t want to minimize tragedy. I am not going to minimize tragedy. I would never say this to someone who is in the midst of experiencing something tragic.

But.

I’ve been thinking about tragedy and I’ve come to the conclusion that what tragedy is (not what it means—it doesn’t help to search for the meaning in tragedy): A radical shift in the nature of the moment.

A loved one is here and then they are gone. Buildings stood, now they are rubble. There was hope and belief and a sense of order, now there is despair, doubt, and chaos.

It appears that way from the middle.

But from further down the road it’s different.

Babylon gave us Jeremiah, and one of the most beautiful phrases in the Tanakh: Kol sasson, v’kol simhah, kol, hatan, v’kol kalah. (The voice of joy and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride.) We sing it at weddings, filled with hope and love. And it goes on. From the ruins of Jerusalem we went to Yavne and created the Mishnah and began to focus on prayer. In our expulsion from Spain, we traveled to Turkey and Morocco and composed unimaginably beautiful music.

Things don’t go according to plan. Life is not what we imagined it would be and it feels like everything’s flying off the rails. At least from the middle. We feel no control because the reality of the moment has radically changed.  This is where we are.

And, frankly, it sucks.

Tisha B’Av is important. We should weep and mourn. We should look at ourselves and the hatred we nourish despite the fact that this hatred kills us. We should remember what it feels like to be in that place where everything has changed in an instant and we are lost.

We should recognize that we can’t always control what happens. And this is where we live.  If we accept this, we will see God in that moment. And hear the Voice of Joy, unlikely as it seems.

“What are you waiting for, Tisha B’Ab?” my dad asks.

What are you waiting for? A radical change?

“It may not happen, or it may happen in a way you never imagined,” he seems to be saying.

“There is nothing to wait for; this is where we live,” I reply.

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July 1, 2013

Catch

There aren’t rules as much as there are expectations.

Neither of us is going to intentionally throw the ball into the street or the woods. It’s just not done that way. But even with our expectations, we can’t always count on the ball not sailing over one of our heads. I had a bruise on my knee for days when the ball got away from him and hit me there–hard. Catch is not a game without risks.

It’s hot and humid and we are both sweating, but this is an important game. I throw the ball to Elly with my right hand, he catches it in his glove with his left and throws it back to me with his right.

It’s late in the day, and we are getting tired. We make mistakes, but chasing after the ball is part of it because the game is about learning, not perfection.

“What happened there?” I ask as the ball passes 20 feel to my right—I’m not fast enough for that.

“I wasn’t looking at you.” comes the response.

My fancy sidearm throw flies over Elly’s head and I apologize: “Sorry–held on to that one too long.”

He laughs, “At least you’re better at sidearm than I am!”

A while ago I saw a play performed in American Sign Language. The actors, students at Gallaudet University, signed and there was a voice interpreter offstage reading all the parts. The characters repeated one line over and over: “There’s nothing to be done.”

At intermission the ASL interpreter with whom I saw the play pointed out that while the interpreter was reading the line directly from the script, the actors were always signing “There’s nothing to be finished.”

I liked that better.

Being human is hard, not hopeless. We are here, and that’s sometimes hard enough without becoming mired in how upset we are that we are limited to this hard existence. I need to remember how lucky I am to have this life at all. This life, this kid, this game. I need to remember that it’s about learning, not perfection.

It starts to rain. Soon we are soaked and can hardly see the ball.

“One more!” I shout from across the field where I’ve chased the last errant toss. I throw the ball in a long high arc across the field. Elly is ready. He watches the ball come towards him through the rain. And he’s smiling because there’s never been a bad day to play this game.

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June 23, 2013

All the Stories

It’s raining this morning so we are sprawled on the couch watching a movie.

The villan has just tricked the hero into turning over his magic staff, the source of all his power, which the villan promptly breaks and then throws, along with our hero, into a deep pit.

“What will happen now?” Elly asks, matter-of-factly—we’ve done this before.

“I dunno, Habibi,” I reply. “Is it about the staff, or is it about him?”

Sure enough the hero, with the help of a friend, is able to access within himself what it takes to repair his staff and escape the pit.

He asks me if I’ve seen this movie before.

“Nah…I just know a lot about stories.” I say.

Because of you. I don’t add.

But as I watch him watching the rest of the movie, or watch him listen as I read to him, or even watch him when it clears up and we are playing catch, I realize that it’s true. It’s possible to know all the stories. Every single one that’s ever been told, or ever will be told, and it’s all because of my son. Or at least because I love him so much and because he’s been using that love to crack me open, to stop me dead in my tracks, for as long as he’s been around.

Because I’m not talking about having an extensive book collection, I’m not talking about Joseph Campbell, and I’m not talking about structuralism. I’m talking about something else altogether. Something simple but not at all easy.

I’m talking about the stories that we keep within us. In our meridians, in our nadis, in the Sephirot. I mean the Stories. The stories that connect us. That allow us to go beyond ourselves. The stories that, if we only stop for a moment and listen to them, allow us to become bigger than ourselves.

Those stories. 

Those stories are hard to access. They are harder to hear. And they are hardest to remember. Being human is hard. We want to believe so much about ourselves. So much about what’s important to us is, well, important to us, and we’re not ever going to completely get over that in this lifetime.

But. If.

But if we sense them, even for a second or a breath or part of a breath, they can help. For that second, that inhale or exhale or that blink of an eye, we can know the stories.

All the stories.

If we know all the stories, for that briefest moment we can recognize something in ourselves. We can recognize everyone else in ourselves. If I know all the stories—the same stories that you know, the same stories that include you, how can I resent you? How can I hate you for your resentment of what’s important to me?

I can’t.

I can’t because I know the stories and knowing the stories means I can see and understand your resentment. It’s the same as my resentment. Your hatred and fear are the same as the hatred and fear I’ve experienced. My anger is the same as the anger you’ve felt. We’ve heard this one before and we can see that it’s not about the staff we might carry, it’s about what’s within us.

All of us.

And it’s hard because we like our staff. We believe we need the staff of what’s important to us, the staff of our hurt and our anger, even the staff of our happiness and our accomplishments. We like those things. I downright love those things enough to horde them.

But if we know the stories we must also know how they end. And they end the same for all of us. And they end too soon for us not to at least try to listen.

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June 17, 2013

Unnamed, not Unknown.

I am reasonably sure he’d say he’s just getting the bagels ready.

I accept that. That is what he’s doing, after all.

Across the room, as the rest of us finish praying through shacharit (the morning service), the guy who’s in charge of the bagels is getting the juice and milk; the jam, peanut butter, and cream cheese out of the dorm-sized fridge in the corner—and he’s toasting bagels, four at a time.

And that’s all he’s doing; he’s getting the bagels ready.

I want to say he’s doing something profoundly spiritual. I want to say he’s connecting us—to one another and to the Divine. But to name what he’s doing and to call it Significant ruins it. It makes it about me—about what I want it to be. It’s like this:

The problem is that ego can convert anything to its own use, even spirituality.  Ego is constantly attempting to acquire and apply the teachings of spirituality for its own benefit.  The teachings are treated as an external thing, external to “me,” a philosophy which we try to imitate.  We do not actually want to identify with or become the teachings.
(Chögyam Trungpa: Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism, p13)

I was going to write about how male spirituality is different from female spirituality. How all the talks and meditation sessions and yoga classes are so dominated by women. I was going to write about how men can be uncomfortable with that, but that maybe men’s authentic spirituality is one of action without calling it spirituality. It is. But it’s not just men’s spirituality that functions that way.

I spent much of my life uncomfortable with the word “spiritual.” It seemed fluffy and goofy and for guys who run around in kaftans with heads of garlic on strings around their neck. What I really thought was that it seemed weak and unintellectual.

I always considered the source of my power to be my brain. I could name things, understand things, remember things very well and very fast. And that’s not a bad thing. Naming has its place. Think about this:

For us, the naming represents a celebration of becoming aware, of knowing the universe at a different level than we had known before. One of my favorite examples is something that today we just take for granted. It’s called the electron. But there was a time before anyone ever dreamed that such an object could exist. In fact, we know the first person who had that dream. It’s a guy named G.J. Stoney. He was an electrochemist in England, and he said, “Hmm, there’s a funny bit of possibility that there’s a bit of matter smaller than an atom.” He was a person who later actually named the object the electron. So what does the naming do for us? Well, once we know it’s there, we can start to use it. And, boy, we’re using it at the very instant with the electrons that we’re manipulating to talk back and forth.
S. James Gates (On Being, June 6, 2013)

You wouldn’t be reading this now if not for the electron. Given the fact that there are probably about seven of you reading this, that’s less important than the fact that I wouldn’t be writing this now if it weren’t for G.J. Stoney and the electron he named. And that’s really only important because this was an assignment from my havruta.

We need to name things. We need to do it to make things work. But we also need not to be so smart.

I need not to be so smart.

As a man, I am a namer. A knower. Most likely a know-it-all.

And it’s been very hard for me to let go of that. And it always will be.

But understanding and knowing are not the same thing. Human beings can understand on a level beyond knowing and naming.  We can just get the bagels ready.

Put the bagels in the toaster. They will pop up.  After that, put them on the plate.

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August 19, 2012

Eleven Months Part 7: Master Hakuin and Elul.

The Zen master Hakuin was praised by his neighbors as one living a pure life.

A beautiful Japanese girl whose parents owned a food store lived near him. Suddenly, without any warning, her parents discovered she was with child.

This made her parents very angry. She would not confess who the man was, but after much harassment at last named Hakuin.

In great anger the parents went to the master. “Is that so?” was all he would say.

After the child was born it was brought to Hakuin. By this time he had lost his reputation, which did not trouble him, but he took very good care of the child. He obtained milk from his neighbors and everything else the little one needed.

A year later the girl-mother could stand it no longer. She told her parents the truth – that the real father of the child was a young man who worked in the fishmarket.

The mother and father of the girl at once went to Hakuin to ask his forgiveness, to apologize at length, and to get the child back again.

Hakuin was willing. In yielding the child, all he said was: “Is that so?”

– Paul Reps and Nyogen Senzaki, Zen Flesh, Zen Bones p. 7. Also on 101 Zen Stories

I will get to this story later. First, some background:

I loved my ex wife from the moment I saw her. I was 17 and she was the most beautiful girl I could ever have imagined meeting. I loved her smile and her laugh and her deadpan sense of humor.

I loved her intensely, powerfully, helplessly. I loved her when we were together and I loved her for long stretches when we were apart. I loved her through relationships with other women. I clung to her. I loved everything about her, except for her. I wanted her to be someone else, someone she couldn’t be.

We have been divorced for seven years and I have spent much of those years making excuses: She wasn’t available to me, she was too involved in her medical training, she moved us too much, she didn’t respect my goals. The list goes on.

The truth is that what I wanted from her was to rescue me from my pain. From my unhappy childhood. From my lack of confidence. From everything I hated about myself. When she couldn’t do this, I got angry and stayed angry.

I would get angry at her for not paying enough attention to me, for not being there for me, for not loving me enough.

I was wrong. She was there. The person I thought she should be wasn’t. But I couldn’t see that because I was so caught up in what I wanted. In reality, she wanted me to succeed, she wanted me to be happy and fulfilled, she wanted me to be her child’s father.

She didn’t stop trying until it became impossible for her to keep trying. Our son was a baby and she realized how much it would damage him if he grew up in a home with parents who fought as much as we did. Finally she asked me to leave because she couldn’t do that to him. And she hated doing it. She hated me for not being able to come through for her. 

I’m not writing this to say it was entirely my fault that our marriage ended—things are always more complex than that. I am not writing this to say that I still grieve for our marriage—I don’t. Both of us are much happier now, and our son is happy and confident—a wonderful kid. Things have turned out pretty well.

I am writing this because it’s the beginning of the Jewish month of Elul. It is time for me to engage in my heshbon hanefesh, my soul’s accounting. What have I carried around within myself for the past year (or years) that I can let go of? This year during Elul, I have made a deal with myself to begin working very hard to see the world as it is and not how I want it to be. This is not easy, but it is necessary. It means coming to some difficult realizations, like understanding how much my ex-wife really loved me for me, and how I didn’t return that. It means welcoming in all my emotions and experiences, the good and the bad, and accepting that neither the good nor the bad experiences and emotions are the whole of my existence—that both are impermanent.

Master Hakuin is going to be my guide this month. He just accepted things with equanimity.

Think about it: He lived a pure life and he was accused of doing something impure. He must have been angry. I’m sure he was. But he didn’t throw a tantrum and shout “It isn’t fair!” He just accepted his anger along with the situation and said “Is that so?” Is that how it is? Okay, that’s how it is. I will move on and do what needs to be done. His reputation was ruined but he still needed to be a part of the community so he could provide for the baby.

When the girl and her parents came to apologize, he must have been relieved, and maybe angry too. But he didn’t say “See? I told all of you that I was not the kind of monk who would go around getting young women pregnant, but no one believed me!”

When they took the child back he must have been heartbroken. He had cared for the baby for a year, watched her grow and smile and take her first steps. But he didn’t scream “How could you take this child from me now? I have been caring for her! Where have you been, you stupid people? You are breaking my heart!” He just said “Is that so?” Is that how it’s going to be now? I’m going to be heartbroken. I’m going to miss her. That is part of my life now.

Elul is about looking back and letting go of those times when we’ve fallen short of that equanimity and, not being a Zen master, I have fallen short a lot. Heshbon hanefesh is called an accounting, but  it’s not about tallying as much as it’s about accepting. It’s a letting go, but a strange one because it’s about welcoming those things of which we are letting go.

Honestly, heshbon hanefesh is more like meditation than accounting. During meditation we are taught not to stop thinking, but to allow our thoughts to arise as they will, to welcome them, but not to follow them. Instead, we observe them and let them fall away. That’s what we are doing, maybe on a slightly bigger scale, during Elul. We are allowing our lives over the past year arise as they will, we are observing them and letting them fall away. When I do this on the meditation cushion I get up feeling clearer and refreshed—ready to move through the day. My hope is that when I move out of Elul and into Rosh Hashanah, I will feel similarly ready to move through another year of my life.

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August 12, 2012

Eleven Months Part 6: How to Pray

I wrote before about attending shacharit (morning services) every day—particularly in the context of mourning. As the year has passed and I’ve returned to the rhythms of Jewish life and blended those rhythms into my larger life, prayer has become more and more part of my consciousness.

I knew about prayer, I thought. I knew the structure of the service and the evolution of the service over the many, many years since Judaism adopted organized prayer as a spiritual practice. I understood the tension between keva (the formal structure and rules surrounding prayer), and kavanah (the intentional or mindful aspects of prayer). Despite that knowledge, or maybe because of that knowledge, I still need to constantly teach myself how to pray. Praying every day has underscored to me how much prayer changes each day, and I think that’s part of why there is a fixed structure. Structures, like yoga asanas or fixed prayers, provide a profound opportunity for reflection and even for creativity.

So I’ve made a list of various ways to pray, depending upon my mood, or my level of energy, or my spiritual needs. I wrote them for myself as a series of intentions to hold as I sing through the service; the “You” in this list is me.

  1. Enter the room.
    Your attendance means something here. Everyone in the room is counting on you. Without you and nine others, no one can pray the complete service. More than that, your presence counts for everyone in the room as well. Be there, be present.
  2. Say hello.
    Acknowledging that you are here with other people is how you begin praying with them.
  3. Imagine you don’t know the words or their meanings.
    You don’t know the nusach. You don’t know anything about this prayer service at all. Let the others sing it to you. Notice how they use their voices, the rising and falling of the music, the changes in tempo and pacing. Be receptive—that awareness is the opposite of passivity.
  4. Imagine you know the words to the prayers, but not their meaning.
    Pay attention to how those words are formed by the shapes you make with your mouth and your breath. This can be a gateway to understanding more about yourself.
  5. Know the words and their meanings.
    Count the number of times certain words come up, or simply note when they do. Try the Hebrew words for: Love, Compassion, Earth, Wisdom, Kindness, Gratitude, Redemption. Choose one each day. Try to take that word with you when you leave.
  6. Sit up straight when you cover your eyes and say Shema: “Listen.”
    Feel the vibration of the word travel down your spine to its base in your tailbone. Listen to your back body. What do you have held there?
  7. Vary your pitch.
    If you lower your voice an octave during the prayer that begins emet (true), when you get to the word yafeh (beautiful), you will feel it through your entire body.
  8. Match pitch.
    If you match pitch with the person sitting next to you, the moment of singing in unison with that person will remind you of the connection you have with that person. You are in this together in a very meaningful way.
  9. Stand
    Feel the floor underneath your feet. Feel the earth beneath the floor supporting you, holding you up.
  10. Open up.
    As you stand to pray the standing prayers, move your shoulder blades toward one another and keep the sides of your body long. Your heart will open and your spine will gently stretch. Remind yourself of the strength of the connection between your mind and body. There is no difference between them, really.

I use this list a fair amount. Some mornings I wake up excited to see where some of these practices bring me and I find that I leave the synagogue feeling the same way I do when I leave my favorite teachers’ classes. Some mornings—more mornings, even most mornings—I rely on the structure of my list to get me focus myself on being present as I pray. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t. Those days I struggle to keep up, to keep my focus, even not to be annoyed at the fact that I’m at the synagogue at 7:30 in the morning when I have a meeting at 9:00. Those mornings, I have done something just by walking through the door.

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July 27, 2012

Eleven Months Part 5: Start Now

Tisha B’Av begins at sundown tomorrow Saturday, July 28.

The saddest day of the Jewish year is one filled with tragedy upon tragedy. One of these tragedies, the destruction of the Second Temple is said to have been caused by sinat chinam, baseless hatred.

Is baseless hatred actually justified hatred that nets the hater nothing, as is concluded in the lesson I linked to just now? Or is it hatred for hatred’s sake?

You know what? It doesn’t matter. You know why? Because everyone gets angry and everyone has the potential to hate. Sometimes anger seems justified: You break my heart, I’m hurt and I’m angry with you. You hurt someone I love, I’m hurt and I’m really angry. And, if I hold on to that anger, it becomes hate.

One story behind the destruction of the Second Temple is a story of clinging to anger, public humiliation, more anger, and vengeance.

Hatred destroys. It destroys our cities, but it also destroys us. Hatred focuses ourselves on ourselves. Hatred removes the possibility of connection to each other from our consciousness.

Tisha B’Av is about remembering these tragedies, but not in order to cling to the pain they caused the Jewish people. We can note our tragedies without adding them to a scorecard of pain and suffering and reasons why we have the right to be angry.

It’s about remembering those tragedies so that we can move on. We are hurt. We are angry. We are bereaved. These are normal human states, but we can take this day and focus on moving forward. Letting go.

As usual, someone else said this much better and more succinctly:

Tisha b’Av is the beginning of Teshuvah, the point of turning toward this process by turning toward a recognition of our estrangement from God, from ourselves, and from others. ( Rabbi Alan Lew (z”l): This is Real and You Are Completely Unprepared, 2003, p. 52)

And so, in the middle of summer, in the middle of the heat and the bright, long days, we can consider those limitless possibilities that summer brings to mind, but first we should turn inward and do a little letting go.

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July 25, 2012

Silence

This year marks the 40th anniversary of murder of 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics. The International Olympic Committee has decided that there should not be a moment commemorating the attack during the opening ceremony on Friday, though Jacques Rogge, the IOC president, held a moment of silence with other dignitaries on Monday, July 22.

I’m not going to comment directly on who’s right and who’s wrong about a moment of silence during the opening ceremony. The IOC didn’t ask me what I thought and a lot of other people are talking about whether Monday’s moment of silence was acceptable or not.

Instead, I’d like to talk a little about silence.

I’ve written about silence before.

Being silent means that our preconceived notions, our prejudices—even our loves—don’t get voiced.

Being silent helps us to be present. We can note our thoughts as they come and move on, allowing that which distracts us to fade away. Silence allows us to inhabit the world all the better. Without the distraction of the noise we make we are able to hear life around us, whether it’s the creaking of the house, the sound of the cat snoring, or even the small movements of those around us.

Silence allows us to inhabit our own bodies more fully. In silence we become aware of our breath, of the small noises that are made as we shift our weight on the floor, of the beating of our heart.

Silence equalizes us as human beings. That awareness of ourselves and of those who surround us can work to improve our compassion for one another. I can’t voice my opinions and neither can you. We can only be together, at that moment, in that place.

I imagine an entire stadium filled with silence. Filled with people who, for that time, are not representing countries, or particular athletic disciplines, or points of view about whether or not that moment of silence is appropriate for the Olympic opening ceremony. They’d all just represent humanity.

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