Month: January 2019

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Mary Oliver, 1935-2019

The first time I heard a poem by Mary Oliver was during Savasana in a yoga class in San Francisco. I was immediately enamoured and sought out her works to explore them further. Her words inspired me, spoke to me in places hidden deep within. Her reverence and abiding love for the natural world mirrored the supreme peace and calm that arose in me when surrounded by forest, mountains, ocean, stream. They say that a picture is worth a thousand words and that can most certainly be true, but so too can a few choice words touch our hearts and give rise to a thousand cherished images within.

On January 17th, 2019, the world lost a much beloved literary voice. At the age of 83, Mary Oliver had enchanted us with her poetry and prose for more than 50 years. As a small gesture of respect and gratitude for all that she has given us, I dedicated my class on Friday to her memory and shared several works with my students – some had heard of her, some had not, and all left with new warmth in their hearts. As Mary said in her poem Mysteries, Yes, “…people come, from delight or the scars of damage, to the comfort of a poem.”

To choose a single favourite from among her poems would be like choosing a favourite star in the sky. Instead, I take inspiration from last night’s full moon, the Wolf moon, and share with you Mary’s poem of the same name.

Wolf Moon ~ Mary Oliver

Now is the season
of hungry mice,
cold rabbits,
lean owls
hunkering with their lamp-eyes
in the leafless lanes
in the needled dark;
now is the season
when the kittle fox
comes to town
in the blue valley
of early morning;
now is the season
of iron rivers,
bloody crossings,
flaring winds,
birds frozen
in their tents of weeds,
their music spent
and blown like smoke
to the stone of the sky;
now is the season
of the hunter Death;
with his belt of knives,
his black snowshoes,
he means to cleanse
the earth of fat;
his grey shadows
are out and running - under
the moon, the pines,
down snow-filled trails they carry
the red whips of their music,
their footfalls quick as hammers,
from cabin to cabin,
from bed to bed,
from dreamer to dreamer.
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Live the questions


“I beg you, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.” ~Rainer Maria Rilke

A friend shared an article with me recently that included this quote.  It is one that gives me pause every time I read it, and this time in particular it resonated deeply. Over the past few months, I have written often about mindfulness, its myriad benefits and also its challenges. Given the latter, some might say that true mindfulness is not for the faint of heart! When we embark upon the journey of mindfulness practice, we seek to embody certain attitudes that guide the way we respond to what arises within us and in the world around us, moment by moment. Among the most challenging of these attitudes can be Patience and Acceptance – which is exactly what Rilke asks of us in this beautiful passage.

The more we practice, the more familiar we become with two important realities: uncertainty and impermanence. Nothing is guaranteed, and nothing that arises will remain exactly the same for any length of time. Put another way, for all the beauty and possibility that lies in our hopes and dreams, we must acknowledge that we can never truly know what is coming until it is here, and the only certainty we can rely upon is that everything in our life will inevitably change. How then do we continue to hope and dream and imagine in the face of this reality? We learn to embrace the very things that challenge us and welcome them as opportunities to learn and explore – ourselves, each other, the world we live in.

I think it is safe to say that we have all experienced impatience at some point in our life. It can be as simple as the impatience of waiting for a delayed flight, an appointment with someone who is running behind, a traffic jam that makes you late for an important event.  What do all of these things have in common? They are external circumstances that have caused us frustration or inconvenience – and they are all beyond our immediate control.  This is where mindfulness can step in, providing a refuge from our frustration and an antidote to the spiraling thoughts that can easily lead us down a path to anger or fear or impulsive reactions.  When we notice ourselves becoming impatient and annoyed, it can act as a mindful reminder to acknowledge what is and is not within our control, and to accept what we cannot change.  As always, this is easier said than done, but then that is why we call it a practice – we are practicing these skills, honing our abilities, cultivating them like seedlings planted in our garden.

It takes time to build a deep and abiding mindfulness practice – perhaps a lifetime. A vital part of this journey is to be patient as we encounter challenges and disappointments, as we look to the horizon for answers and find only questions. If we can accept that change is inevitable and the future will always remain unknown to us, perhaps we will find a sense of peace that allows us to truly inhabit the present moment and embrace whatever it may bring – to love the questions and to live them fully, right here and now.

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Conscious intention

Intention is the core of all conscious life. It is our intentions that create Karma, our intentions that help others, our intentions that lead us away from the delusions of individuality towards the immutable verities of enlightened awareness. Conscious intention colours and moves everything.

~Master Hsing Yun

A new year is upon us and we naturally look forward with eager eyes, filled with anticipation and curiosity about what might lie ahead. It has become common practice to make resolutions for the coming year, promises for what we will do, how we will be, changes we will make. What resolutions have you made in past years? How many of those promises were successfully fulfilled?

I have never really been one for New Year’s resolutions. Since mindfulness practice became part of my daily life, I find that what resonates with me instead is trying to live with intention – not just at the dawn of a new year, but every day. As Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh says, “Waking up this morning I smile. Twenty-four brand new hours are before me. I vow to live fully each moment, and to look at all beings with eyes of compassion.” We need not wait for a new calendar year to set intentions for how we will go about our day, how we will treat ourselves, how we will interact with the world around us.

Through mindfulness we learn to pay conscious attention to the present moment, and we come to realise that this moment is all that we are truly guaranteed. When we understand the impermanent nature of things, it is not that we must abandon all planning for the future, but we can invite a sense of perspective into our plans. When we plan a holiday, it can bring such joy and excitement to investigate all the sights we want to see, the food we want to eat, the adventures we want to take. However, with all of that planning, it can be deeply disappointing when the trip we imagined in our dreams turns out quite differently in reality. The same holds true for promises we make to ourselves or to others that in the end simply cannot be kept. We cannot truly know what lies ahead for us – change, challenge, the unexpected arises on our path and as a result plans may go awry and promises may go unfulfilled. While we are unable to anticipate exactly what the future holds, we can choose to open our hearts and minds and be willing to entertain all possibilities with a sense of acceptance and equanimity.

Practicing mindfulness teaches us how to live with intention. We can intentionally invite compassion and lovingkindness into our hearts so that we may nourish ourselves and share it with those around us. We can intentionally respond to challenge and duress with a sense of equanimity. We can intentionally accept the changing nature of life, releasing our attachment to outcomes we cannot control. As Tibetan Buddhist nun Pema Chödrön advises, “Welcome the present moment as if you had invited it. It is all we ever have so we might as well work with it rather than struggle against it. We might as well make it our friend and teacher rather than our enemy.”

As you look to the year ahead, what intentions do you wish to invite into your heart? Perhaps ask yourself this question as you sit in meditation and notice what arises. We need not wait for a clock to strike or a calendar page to turn – we can infuse each day with conscious intention, welcoming each moment as a friend, a teacher, an opportunity to experience something new.