Laundry Lessons

After the Ecstasy, the Laundry.  I have always loved this title of Jack Kornfeld's book. As I elevate my swollen, bruised, and badly sprained ankle I have plenty of time to reflect on it.  There is no choice but a slower paced re-entry from our Jewish Mindfulness Retreat in red rock country, New Mexico.

Twelve souls led by Rabbi Yael Levy wove deep bonds through shared silence, meditation, prayer, song, and hiking together through an elemental and awe inspiring landscape.  Simply getting there was a commitment.  Being unplugged from all electronics for five full days stilled the chatter and was a wonderful relief.  The trails were challenging, especially for someone like me, more accustomed to sea-level beach walking than high altitude wilderness hiking.  Mindfulness was very specific and practical in terms of noticing where to place each foot or decide which rocks to step on to get across a stream.  We  practiced both offering and receiving help over the rough spots in silence.

The morning after returning home, I unpacked directly into a laundry basket.  As I carried the overflowing basket down our narrow and steep basement stairs I slipped, missed the last step, and twisted my right ankle.  I sat on the floor in a heap with all the spilled laundry, crying in pain and crying at how quickly it seemed the benefits of the retreat and mindfulness about each step had dissipated.  After a while the irony and humor hit me, and then gratitude it hadn't been worse and hadn't happened on the retreat.


Scooping up the laundry, I hobbled over to the wash machine.  My denim shirt was especially caked with red mud.  I had been using it to lay down on while watching sunlight through tree branches, movement of clouds, and changes in qualities of light - a world that suddenly seemed very far away.  I rinsed the mud off in the laundry tub before putting it in the machine, watching a swirl of red - the tangible remnant of the retreat - disappear down the drain.  


Laundry is now intertwined with mindfulness for me at a muscle-memory level.  My ankle is forcing me to slow down and simply notice.  I'm watching the  alarming misshapenness slowly subside.  Observing the colors of the bruise change from purples to reds and yellows and browns is not as much fun as observing the color changes of dawn and dusk of the New Mexico sky.  But it is what is, now.  I am observing the miracle of healing. 


I just ordered After the Ecstasy, the Laundry:  How the Heart Grows Wise on the Spiritual Path.  It's time to read it.

Janet Cooling: Still Life Meditations

Janet Cooling describes these mixed-media works on paper as grounding meditations that represent infinity. It was fun to document both these recent paintings and the dialogue with her about them.

I have footage of Janet and various phases of her painting from 1997 onward. I hope to digitize it and edit it into several YouTube videos, now that I finally have a new iMac. Today I got an updated firewire cable, thinking I would then be able to import it. (The old cable didn't fit the new computer.) For some reason only a few minutes of it imported... Yikes. I'll solve this yet.

When I first started documenting Janet's work, there was only linear video editing, no funding, and I had never heard of YouTube, if it even existed. Now we have easy digital editing, no need for funding, and YouTube! All I need is to get it to work. And get to work...

T-Shirt Synchronicity

The Venerable Choeze Lotsel Gyamtso (Lobsang Tsultrim) and me


A day and a half of work on the Compassion Mandala, with plenty of mistakes!

I wore my Gaden Shartse College t-shirt today, which I had gotten from the monks in 2005, hoping it would help me to have more patience. To my surprise, it turned out that Lobsang Tsultrim was the artist who had designed it back in 2001! I was touched that he was the designer, and he was touched to see it worn... a happy synchronicity for both of us. He is not only a Master of traditional mandala sand painting, but also a contemporary painter of Thangkas. I didn't look at his website, www.puremind.org, until after the workshop ended today.

We didn't have time to add color to our mandalas today, but got to see a picture of what it looks like fully colored: overwhelming after experiencing it deconstructed, at the micro level. As performance artist Rachel Rosenthal would say, it was "doing by doing."

Lobsang didn't want to teach certain things about the inner meaning of the mandala, saying this can't be done without initiation and vows, or is otherwise dangerous. On one hand, I would not have learned what little I know of Kabbalah had Jewish Renewal teachers not bent the traditional rules in order to teach people under forty, unmarried, and/or female. On the other hand, those teachers knew me over time. It wasn't hit-and-run. So I appreciate his caution, within which he is most generous.

I'm very glad that Lobsang was granted asylum in the United States in 2002 and is teaching workshops all over the world. I'm happy to be on his email list!

Not Quite Creatively Renewed

I spent a lot of today's workshop telling myself that I don't have to go back tomorrow. It felt like geometry class, measuring with a little piece of paper in units of 8, 4, 2, and 1, re-learning how to use a compass, ruler, pencil, and eraser. There was nothing freehand about drawing the structure for the Compassion Mandala. Having to get it precise didn't feel very compassionate to a dyslexic like me. It seemed like a fine line between obsessionalism, tedium, and meditation, with the emphasis on tedium.

As we broke for lunch, Lobsang told us he spent ten years learning what he had just showed us in two hours. Some things can't be condensed that much.

I had spent time with other monks from from the Gaden Shartse Monastery in South India, Lobsang Tsultrim's home, when they were here in 2005. (My photo above, taken at the local internet cafe, is from that time.)

The strange chanting with horns and cymbals, bells and drum, filled the garden of the Center for Creative Renewal for a special program. Tulku Lobsang Jinpa Rinpoche, an elder with big ears and glasses with yellowish tinted lenses, was the head teacher. I sat in the second row, almost center, but slightly to his left. There was a healing and purification ritual, followed by lecturing and more lecturing. The repetition was boring. My seat grew harder. My mind wandered. Blah, blah. I wondered when it would be over.

Suddenly he was talking about meditation. I started to pay attention. Listening to the translator I realized he was guiding us in a short one, without actually saying so. I did as he said. And then I focussed/unfocussed on the Rinpoche and whoever/whatever he had become at that point. It was dusk. The moon was almost full, and had been rising and getting brighter and brighter in the darkening sky. Rinpoche seemed to be looking in my direction. He was looking at me. I felt as if he was addressing me. I started listening to him. I let the sounds of the Tibetan language wash over me. The message was coming through without translation. The translator’s voice was like a distant addendum to the real event.

The tears flowed and kept flowing, meeting under my chin and wetting my neck. Something got planted/transmitted directly. (Oh yeah, I remembered later. That happened last time I was around these guys too, the White Tara Initiation time. Not the kind of thing you can really talk about...)

Then I heard the translator say something about how to end meditation, “so you are free to do other things.” I appreciated the help, since we were in so deep that it was important to remember how to end. Or to end. I looked up and we were both smiling - by then it was so dark that his teeth shone like a Chesire cat.

So - it is good to remind myself that if I endure the boredom, the repetition, and desire to flee, that something might actually happen (or not). I think I will go back tomorrow... Besides, that is when we will finally add color to our Compassion Mandalas.

Creative Renewal

Today and Sunday I will be at The California Center for Creative Renewal, www.artretreats.com, at a workshop on "Tibetan Mandala: Introduction to the Art of Mandala as Meditation and the Hidden Symbolism of Tibetan Sacred Art", taught by The Venerable Lobsang Tsultrim. "The map hidden in the mandala is not of external paths, rather the map is an internal path of consciousness."

In the lunar Hebrew calendar, today is also the second day of the holiday in which we remember standing at the foot of Mount Sinai, accepting and receiving the revelation of Torah.

It rained last night and the plants are sparkling with moisture. The garden at the Center will be beautiful. I'll let you know how it goes...