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.  

Gone Fishing...

Dad loved to fish.  

I remember the day I looked out the front window of our apartment and saw him silhouetted against a glittering field of sun sparkles on the small lake we lived on at the time.  Dad sat there, motionless, fishing pole in hand, in his beloved rowboat, a couple of hundred feet offshore.  Like any good sportsman, he had learned to sit still-- and wait. 

Dad had "found his spot." The red and white bobber became his visual meditation object.  He didn't seem in a hurry to move elsewhere.  He had found his moment's peace.   He'd often return to shore afterwards in a good mood.  He was calmer, quieter, more content. 

Fifty years after his death, this is one of my strongest visual memories of him.

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.  He kept himself busy.  As well as time and energy devoted to full time job and parenting the three (sometimes four) of us, he was a union activist and officer, an avid ham radio operator,  an active member of the Loyal Order of Moose, and a boy scout council commissioner.

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.  Driven by his own demons, he worked hard, played hard, and -- all too often he was uptight, often upset.  Like others of his generation he took "spare the rod and spoil the child" as a gospel truth.  If, he saw "defiance" in our actions -- his violent temper would erupt into words -- and actions.  

Predictably, Dad's health began to degrade in his 50's.  Finally, after a heart attack, two strokes, and increasingly 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 deep within us.  It aligns with 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 insight and 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 react, thinking 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 may emerge during our period of meditation.  This shouldn't come as a surprise. The imprints of our entire history of uncomfortable 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.  

The Sounds of Silence  

 

When I first heard Simon and Garfunkel's The Sounds of Silence, I was a high school senior.  At the time, I remember being struck by the poetic paradox.  A decade later, after a meditation practice had become part of my life, I was struck by the Reality.  

 

It became part of my lived experience.  

 

I have a clear memory of this happening during Monday Morning Mindfulness at Community Yoga and Wellness Center about a dozen 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 stoplight at the corner.  

 

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

 

Yet, that day during the 9:00 Sit, when a predictable pause in the traffic noise occurred as the light turned red, a profound shift in my consciousness appeared.  The silence deepened.  

It got really, really, really, quiet.   

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

  

Fifty years ago, my first Zen teacher spoke of the Soundless Sound.  That morning, as it had a few times before, the paradox dissolved.  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.   

 

Here and Now 

 

Sitting here at this moment, I find myself weeping.   At age 80, 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 today's "blog practice." In these mysterious moments where Time and the Timeless intersect, Dad sits silently, surrounded by suns sparkles, a couple hundred feet off-shore.  Here, as I center into the Heart of Awareness, dad has found his moment's peace. 

 

May all beings experience the peace that passeth all understanding. 

 

(Originally Published August, 2013.  Revised. )