a path

I describe the tiny house as my meditation and writing retreat, but I haven’t been doing much meditating on the cushion lately.  While I was more disciplined last winter, there were also funny little repeating thoughts regretting that I didn’t have my chant book with me (it was in one of the cardboard boxes I’d left with MAC) and imagining my practice would be even better if I was doing daily chants too.  I brought the book back after visiting MAC last May and smugly used it … for four weeks.

In the past few years, I’ve followed the news of public figures who seem afraid to be honest and don’t know how to apologize.  I examine all the personal stuff it brings up for me.  And a known risk in moving back to Nova Scotia was that I might meet people again that reactivate guilt and shame from my youth.  Never mind that I did forgiveness exercises (for myself and others) back in the 1990’s, I know seeing certain people again is going to trigger old shit.  My path encourages me to be brave.

I have many years’ experience in introversion, shyness, conflict-avoidance, passivity, and white-lies.  When I think about the moments I was most brave, what comes to mind is not attempting to climb Mount Rainier, doing the polar bear dip in Halifax HarboUr, or retiring early.  It’s those times I’ve given honest and true apologies.  Like an opportunity I took a few years ago to apologize to a childhood friend for pain I had contributed to thirty years before.  It was uncomfortable but I knew it was the right thing to do.

Because I had not joined a sangha here and I’m not on social media, I felt like the rug got pulled out from under me last June when I first heard disturbing news and allegations within the international Buddhist community I belonged to when I lived out west.  I felt angry, disappointed, and sad.  I put the chant book away.

Lately I’ve wondered if I’m not meditating enough.  If I’ve reverted to the chronic-worry program installed in early childhood.  If dealing with old stuff from my childhood and youth that has come up since I’ve moved back east is moving forward or moving backward.  If I’m actually avoiding more than I’m confronting.

Last week I reread the book I always reread when I need a reset.

I reminded myself that I may have jumped off the bandwagon but I’m still on the path every day, on or off the cushion.  The questioning, the old habits like chronic worry and procrastination, the triggered emotions—it’s all part of the path.  My retirement has created more time and space for addressing stuff so up it comes: dealing with some old baggage while trying not to carry any new.

References and related links:

• MAC: mon amie Caroline.
• Sangha: a local Buddhist community.
• the simple truth (post #43)