A Moment's Peace

"What you need, what we all need, is silence. Stop the noise in your mind in order for the wondrous sounds of life to be heard. Then you can begin to live your life authentically and deeply.” 

-- Thich Nhat Hahn

 

 "The quieter you become the more you can hear."

-- Ram Dass

I remember my dad yelling, angrily, demanding that we kids shut up so he could get some "peace and quiet!"  
"Damn it!" he screamed, "Just give me a moment's peace!" 

The threatening tone of his voice and likelihood of imminent violence usually did shut us up--at least for a few moments.    

Of course, kids will be kids.  There were times, that I just couldn't keep my mouth shut -- and the threat became a reality.

I ache now with the memory of his anguish and his anger -- and my own fear and pain.  I wish I knew then what I know now.  Having practiced meditation for decades, if I could pilot a time machine back through the decades, I'd gladly give him that moment's peace.  This time it would be done out of compassion not fear.  I could have sat in silence with him for a long, long time.  Perhaps, I would have been able to give him the peace he yearned for.

Gone Fishing...

Dad loved to fish.  

I remember the day I looked out the front window of our apartment and saw him silhouetted against the sun sparkles of the small lake we lived on.  Surrounded by sun sparkles and blue sky, Dad sat there in his beloved rowboat, fishing pole in hand,  a couple of hundred feet offshore.  He could sit like that, motionless, surrounded by the stillness of that lake for a long time, just peering at the red and white bobber.  He seemed at peace in those moments.  He'd often return to shore afterwards, seemingly in a good mood.  He appeared to be calmer, quieter, more content.  

Now, fifty years after his death, it is one of my strongest visual memories of him.

Yet, unfortunately those moments were not all that common.  My dad worked hard at the factory all day, and then, a single parent, he would prepare dinner before we kids would take over to do the dishes.  Beyond that, he was often in motion, keeping himself busy with other activities as well.  As well as parenting the three (sometimes four) of us, he was a union officer, an avid ham radio operator,  an active member of the Loyal Order of Moose, and a boy scout council commissioner.

Unfortunately, Dad suffered from hypertension, atherosclerosis, and cardiac disease.  Longevity wasn't his genetic strong suit.  His mother, Vera, had died at age 42.  His father, Harold,  had died of heart disease at age 57.  To make matters worse, Dad was also a longtime smoker.  And, as we saw above, stress management wasn't his forte.  Driven by his own demons, he lived "with gusto." He worked hard, played hard, and  was often uptight.  All too often -- especially if he saw "defiance" in our actions -- his violent temper would erupt into his words and actions.  

Perhaps predictably, Dad's health began to degrade in his 50's.  Finally, after a heart attack, two strokes, and uncontrollable high blood pressure, our family doctor advised dad to finally retire and "just go fishing."  At age 59, he did just that. He bought himself a camper and a trailer, and for much of final year and a half of his life, he traveled and fished from coast to coast.   

My heart glows with images of the moments of peace he may have experienced as he approached journey's end.
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A Moment's Peace

As I've come to see it,  the quest for "peace and quiet" is universal.  It emerges from our True Nature. 

Thich Nhat Hanh once wrote that even the businessman's smoke break was an attempt to stop and breathe.  It was a real, if unskillful, attempt to find a moment's peace within the busyness of life.  The promise of the Practice is that we can engage in the quest for peace with a greater degree of skill.  As many of us have seen, there are deeper and fuller realms of experience available to us.  As many of us have found, there is a silence so deep that it even embraces the noise.   

Fortunately, in this era, we have access to numerous techniques, built on a foundation that stretches back through thousands of years of time, that allow us to connect more deeply with the vast, tranquil sea of mindful awareness itself.  

As Mindfulness Practice is cultivated over time, it is true that most folks will notice themselves becoming calmer. Their minds come quieter.  The cacophony of random thoughts and feelings and bodily tensions that had dominated their attention release their grip a bit, and a sense of silent spaciousness emerges more frequently in their lives.  Yet -- and here's where it gets interesting-- as the Practice deepens, there will be times that sounds and other sensations will be experienced even more vividly! 

Both Sides Now

As more time and energy are devoted to Mindfulness Practice, there will be times on the zafu that the volume knob on disturbing thoughts and uncomfortable feelings may get fully cranked to the right.  Oftentimes at those points, our attachment to a model of "peace and quiet," will generate a level of resistance to that experience.  Rather than opening to the experience, we will think something is wrong.  We may believe we are having a "bad" meditation.  

I've come to see that is not the case.  In actuality, it may well be a sign that the Practice is deepening!

As time goes on, layers and layers of restlessness and dissatisfaction and pain and fear can and will emerge at times during a period of meditation.  This shouldn't come as a surprise. The imprints of our entire history of experiences still reside within us.  These patterns of energy exist in the cells and synapses of our body and neurology.

 

The truth is that most of us have learned to avoid these more challenging thoughts and feelings.  We've stuffed that stuff down for years.  It takes commitment, time, effort, and patience to allow it to surface, to breath fresh air, to be healed.  

 

It takes Practice. 

 

Sometimes, as these more challenging energies emerge, the Practice can be as simple as turning our attention away from the narratives running through the mind to explore the underlying emotions and bodily tensions that we are experiencing before returning our attention back to our primary meditation object.   If you choose to do this -- again and again and again -- at a certain point, you'll notice.  The volume level becomes lower.  Over time, the episodes of "noisy" patterns of thought and emotions become less frequent -- and they pass more swiftly.  

It just takes Practice.

The Sounds of Silence

 

When I first heard the Simon and Garfunkel's The Sound of Silence as a high school senior,  I was struck by the poetic paradox of the title.  Decades later, I was struck by the Reality.  I have a clear memory of this happening during Monday Morning Mindfulness at Community Yoga and Wellness Center years ago.

Community Yoga is a beautiful practice studio perched on the second story of a building half a block from the main downtown intersection of Greenfield, MA.  Although there wasn't much traffic as the Early Bird session began at 7:15 AM, by the time the Monday Morning Mindfulness Circle gathered for our opening twenty minute period of silent meditation at 9:00 am, there was usually a stream of stop and go traffic accelerating from the the stoplights at the corner.  

 

At times -- especially with the windows are open -- it got quite noisy!

Yet, at one point that Monday during the 9:00 Sit, when a predictable pause in the traffic noise occurred, a deep shift in my consciousness appeared.  The silence deepened.  It was even more palpable.  

It got really, really, really, quiet.   

Then it got really, really, really, QUIET! The Silence was Deafening!

  

Fifty Years ago, Years my first Zen teacher spoke of the Soundless Sound.  That morning, as it had a few times before, those words became deliciously and distinctly real to me. 

 

Then, it got even better. 

 

As I sat there in wonder, the depth of that vast sea of silent stillness only deepened as the stoplight changed and the next car accelerated past the open window.  The vast expanse of still, silent, clear spaciousness I was experiencing did not dissipate.  It seemed to deepen.  The hiss of the car's tires along the asphalt and the mechanical whirr of its engine emerged, peaked, and then dissolved within the embrace of that boundless silence.  In those moments, I experienced the vast, mysterious presence of the Sacred.   

 

Sitting here at this moment, I find myself weeping.   I welcome these tears with an open heart and a clear mind.  The fragile majesty of our collective human condition dances through these tears.  Accepted wholeheartedly, the tears melt the apparent dualities of pleasure and pain, of gratitude and grief.  There is only One Love.  It embraces all.

I'm grateful to the myriad teachings and teachers that have helped me to bring the energy of these memories into the present moment's "blog practice." In this mysterious moment where Time and the Timeless intersect, dad sits silently, surrounded by sunsparkles, a couple hundred feet off-shore.  Here, dad has found his moment's peace -- forever.

 

May all beings experience the peace that passeth understanding. 

(Originally published, August, 2013.  Revised. )