A Blue Mass

Dawn Patrol. First light. The alarm chimed at 5:30 this morning; I was in the car by 5:40, everything sorted. The preparations now are automatic. I can carry the surfboard and dry bin at the same time I open the door on the way to the car, keys around my neck on a ribbon. Wetsuit slipped on easily. Car was already prepared. The drive to Blackies takes 20 minutes no matter what I do. At the beach by 6, in that beautiful blue mass shortly after, joined by lovely surf sister, Kathy. A gorgeous day. Choppy water, too much wind. Cross current making the waves do funny things. I don't care. It's divine. Hello to friends in the water. Hello to friends in the parking lot. Blackies is such a loving community. And it is always a delicious gift to go surfing on a Wednesday. And now this will be my every Wednesday, as I have said goodbye to BTG, at least for awhile. Wednesday surf sessions at Blackies will replace my weekly therapy session, and I think nothing less than the ocean could replace BTG.

Blackies, Newport Beach, California

In the really beautiful podcast Turning to the Mystics with James Finley, he said, "One way I've thought of psychotherapy is that psychotherapy is meditation for two. In other words, what psychotherapy is about is I'm inviting you to slow down enough to be present at the feeling level to what you just said. And I meet you there and we talk." BTG has met me where I am for the better part of 18 months. In Buddhism, such a witness is called a spiritual friend, a kalyanamitra. He has been such a powerful presence for me. Part mentor/teacher, imaginary friend, father figure -- a consistent, kind, steady presence that I have rarely experienced in men. I found my original self and dusted it off thanks in part to his excellent guidance. When I entered therapy, the door to my heart was absolutely bolted shut. I was terrified and closed off. The consistent generosity and dependability of the therapeutic relationship helped me open up. I could count on BTG to be there and be kind, which allowed me to unlock that door and peek outside. But it is a one-sided relationship. A teacher can only take you so far -- don't confuse the finger pointing at the moon with the moon itself. It's time to fully engage with reciprocal relationships and let the one-sided ones go. It's time to part even from my own personal Jizo, the Bodhisattva who came down into my hell realm and pulled me out.

At some point in every hero's journey, the hero loses the mentor and walks on alone; the last challenge is to carry the gifts the mentor has given them out into the world. BTG has told me nearly every week that I'm really ok, inherently lovable, and I might just believe him now. So much faced in the past many months! All of my deepest, darkest has been shared with BTG and then you, dear reader. I'm emptied out and not a little weary. Time for a rest. Everything I know to have troubled me, and many things of which I was entirely unaware, have been processed and digested, soothed and reframed. We all need to walk the path ourselves in the end. BTG, surfing, meditation, and the Sisterhood have been my aides for this part of the journey. They have all gotten me to this point. And this point is incredibly peaceful. It is time to travel without BTG's portion of support for a bit and see how I do, see if I can maintain the growth and keep growing on my own.

Finley talked about the link between trauma and transcendence, and how entering the spiritual path started for him. “So I saw this strange mixture where trauma and transcendence touch each other. And later when I got into the mystics, like the dark night of the soul and the Buddhist teaching of the great death, also the very teachings of Jesus about the cross, about life out of death and the deathless nature of love. And that's how it started for me.” I am so grateful to have found BTG: a therapist with a spiritual bent who could help me navigate these stormy waters on both levels, psychologically and spiritually. Though BTG denies any mysticism, I don't. I know I've been through a deep and mystical transformation - walked the well trod spiritual path in the company of many enlightened beings. I choose to think of it this way. And it never ends -- the spiritual path never ends. This is simply one round of the wheel that is passing. A new one will begin soon. A soft pause in between. The bardo. The earth spins and revolves, seasons come and go, breath inhales and exhales, waves crest and fall, relationships come and go. Everything changes. My journey is not exempt from that.

I turn to the Christian mystics for inspiration now, because they use the language of love. Both Buddhists and Christians talk about love and compassion at the center of all things, but they emphasize different language. The Christian mystical language of love helps me with my current work to receive generosity and love and believe in it. Assume it. Feel it. Stop rejecting myself, stop believing in my worthlessness. Surf Sensei shared a Spanish phrase with me today, "Déjate querer" -- let yourself be loved. Finley said, "The real story of our life is where we are at in the reciprocity of love. What I think it is, in these grace moments where we experience it, when it's actually happening, it's too self-evident to doubt, because it's a moment of awe, or it's like amazement or wonder. It's too self-evident to doubt, it's too deep to comprehend, and that's what makes it numinous.”

The numinosity of the Sisterhood has worked its healing magic again to help heal me here. We are planning our first big surf trip together -- Hawaii in August! I'm so happy! We wanted to join surf sister Evelyn down there -- she goes every year -- and we are doing it! Quite a feat for twenty-ish people to find a common date and enough resources and the devotion to each other to make it happen. This bond of friendship continues to grow and expand and it is so beautiful and soothing to me. At this point, though, I cannot go on the trip. As I wrote about last time, I'm broke. A trip to Hawaii is not in the cards at this moment. But when I announced this in the chat, about six sisters reached out to me with offers to pay for my stay, my plane ticket, lessons. I was overwhelmed. The doorway into my heart was busted open. They want me to be there. It is the opposite of being abandoned, and I still don't know what to do with this massive generosity. It is humbling. Not sure I will go, but the Sisterhood makes believing in my own worthlessness impossible. Finley stayed at the Abbey of Gethsemani with Thomas Merton. He said of Merton, "The reality of Thomas Merton made God's unreality impossible to me." The presence of the Sisterhood makes my worthlessness impossible to me.

And the reality of BTG makes compassion and full acceptance possible to me. As a vow, I will continue to read and learn about the spiritual path, continue the constant internal investigation that is a part of it. The releasing of separation as Nancy Mujo Baker and other Zen masters put it. Looking for the places where I'm stuck and working to get unstuck. Buttons are still there. I just know them better now and have the tools to deal with them more effectively as I continue to search for more inspiration and ways to reframe my experience. Richard Rohr, Father Boyle, and James Finley are all soothing in their speech and messages, even if I remain uncomfortable with the language of God. I will continue as well with my favorite Buddhist teachers: Jack Kornfield, Gil Fronsdahl, and Joseph Goldstein all similarly soothing. Pema Chodron, though now retired, remains the queen. I've even gone back to reading about Taoism in recent weeks -- I think Taoism is the purest expression of the path. Much to learn. So BTG's voice can be found in other places. Even in a podcast about a long dead Christian mystic.

I have internalized so much from BTG. Some people say that they know what their therapist would say in response to a situation and that's how they know they're good to go. Right through today's last session, I don't have that. I was still surprised by what he said. His genius to me was that I couldn't predict what he would say - and I can always predict people. Master of the reframe, he is! But what I did internalize was his kindness. I have internalized his soft, gentle presence soothing my wounds. That will never leave me. My inner voice is no longer critical. It's kind. It was really his compassion that I found healing. A most compassionate witness made self-compassion possible. This is my vow: getting up every day and moving more compassionately in the world.

Finley spent six years in the monastery with Thomas Merton and said of him, "...the power of a compassionate intervention that opens up something for someone to share something vulnerable that lets them go deeper. And I think actually a lot of Merton's teachings are about that. Because he was so in touch with his own brokenness, he was very aware of it. And he says it's through our acceptance of our brokenness that we can get in touch with God who is infinitely in love with us, thinks we are precious in our brokenness. Instead of trying to get over our brokenness or past our brokenness, it's the deep acceptance of the brokenness, it's the meeting place." BTG met me in my brokenness and told me I was okay for a year and a half. It has finally stuck. He was so gentle with me, I can now be gentle with myself and others. Finley again, "And everybody has a little piece of their story that is sometimes almost more than they can bear. And everyone has things about themselves that they can't abide, that they wish weren't true. And I think what I find so consoling about these teachings is the need to be honest about that, to be real about that, but infinitely tender-hearted toward the hurting places like that." BTG taught me how to be tender-hearted -- to myself as well as to others.

And so now I move on without this key person in my support system. Let's see how I do without a weekly dose of "you're ok" from a paternal figure. Let's see if I can maintain a bit of that beautifully loose and emptying self. Finley again, “And so Thomas Merton once said, do I even have a life anymore? I'm blown down the street like leaves scattered in all directions. You know, you're dispossessed of having [a self], dispossessed of a cherished thing to protect, which you saw as freedom. But at the other level, it always remains with the psychological level, we need to have our bearings somewhere. There's physical, psychological security. We all need that, we're just human beings. But as an ordinary human being, I've somehow been transformed in this freedom of the midst of the unravelings. I might be happy to be going through in my life right now. And so I find peace, you know, in the midst of my fear, peace in the midst of my uncertainty. And I think that's the quality of the path.” Finley and Merton sound a lot like Buddhists. I think these religious masters are all the same. Look deeply and they all say the same things. I'm empty on the absolute level (Buddhist levels) and yet still need something to ground me on the relative level. Surfing and meditating will be my ground. Within Sisterhood, I find my freedom.

“The world and time are the dance of the Lord in emptiness,” said Merton. I'm still not comfortable with the language of Christianity. God and the Lord are words too laden with baggage. But Zen Master Dogen's emptiness is echoed here. I sat in the water today and faced the shore, opened my arms to the rising sun, and said thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I am so grateful for all of it. For right now, today, I am grateful, and for this sweet period of transition to California, transition to a calmer version of myself, emptier. This past two years have been life changing. It does feel like an ending of sorts today. The end of the beginning, perhaps. The end of a chapter. Or the beginning of the end? What is the rest of my life going to look like? Peaceful, I think. I'm not much worried about it. That's a question from a different era.

From Opening the Hand of Thought: Foundations of Zen Buddhist Practice by Kōshō Uchiyama, “Dwelling here and now in this reality, letting go of all the accidental things that arise in our minds, is what I mean by 'opening the hand of thought.' When we think of 'now' in the ordinary sense, we assume that there is a linear flow of time from the past into the present and forward into the future. Actually, it isn’t that way at all. Actually, all that there really is, is now. As the scenery of the present, however, there is a past, present, and future. Let me say that again: within the present, there is a past, a present, and a future. The past and future are real and alive only in the present. This concept of time in Buddhist thought is very important. It is different from the notion in Western philosophy that time flows from the past, into the present, and on into a future in a linear way. According to Buddhist teachings it doesn’t quite work that way. The past, present, and future are all contained within the present.”

The beautiful thing about Uchiyama Roshi's quote is that it means I can rewrite the past in every moment. And that's what I have done here. That's the purpose of this blog. I have rewritten the story of my past from this current view in my present. The scenery of my life has changed and with it, the scenery of the past was also allowed to change. With a more compassionate eye, I have gently scanned my past for all of its harms. I have witnessed them, soothed them, and can now move on. Seeing everything in this new way allows me to have compassion for all of us: Mom, Dad, me, sister. We were all trying to survive and did the best we could to do so. It's nobody's fault what happened. There is no more blame burning a hole in my soul. The fire has gone out. Only love. Only compassion. BTG said once, "We’re all improbable texts waiting to be read with acceptance." I hope I have written here with the eyes of compassion. I have written for myself and for you, that my words of transition and longing might help someone else through their own dark night.

I see my issues as both/ands now. Every quality has its light and dark side. Powerlessness gives me an intimate knowledge of how power works. Invisibility can be seen as a strength, for while I have been invisible, I have observed others and learned how to tend to them. Comparing can be seen as a wish to grow, to encompass more. Perfectionism can be simply tossed out the window, honestly. LOL. My imperfections are what make me interesting. Perfection is impossible and unnecessary: I'm ok just as I am. My striving for excellence can be seen as curiosity -- a wonderful curiosity that draws things nearer to me, including them in my self, joyfully attending to them.

I shall do my best to dwell in the here and now. It's a practice. Perhaps more easily accomplished from where I stand now, late in life, all accomplishments accomplished and found lacking -- lacking the peace that I have arrived at right here from surfing through my many emotional waves, facing my demons, walking the spiritual path. No master's degree or PhD worked to heal me. Rigid efforts to live right haven't healed me. Softening healed me. Bravery in the face of my shame healed me. Compassion healed me. Meditation has supported this healing. As I drove away from Blackies today I thought, "I have my practice, my meaning, my community, right here. I have my sangha. I have my dharma. I have my Buddha. Because I have surfing, I have all three."

Surfing has all the components of a spiritual practice. Instead of Buddha, Dharma, Sangha -- the three jewels of Buddhism -- I have Ocean, Surfing, and Sisterhood. They are the three treasures of this practice. A more natural religion is a better fit for me. I have never been a fan of organized religion. Fascinated by it, yes. Want to go worship? No. And why would I? Religions have been male dominated places, largely hostile and demeaning to women. I haven't felt welcomed there, or rather, in order to be welcomed, I have to cut off large pieces of who I am in order to belong. I have seen how much organized religion excludes people as much as they attempt to include. But mostly, the idea of worshipping a person seems to lead worshippers astray as much as the act gives genuine meaning to people's lives. Spiritual teachers are meant to show us how to walk the path ourselves, not sit back and merely admire their efforts.

I studied gifted education when I got my PhD. People often looked at people labelled as gifted as superhuman, as being born with something beyond their own capability. That's only a little bit true -- all people are born with certain strengths. Then, some work incredibly hard at developing those strengths if they have the combination of causes and conditions that allow them to do it, the opportunities. I think it works the same way with worshipping gods. We see the god as divine, something not like us. We think they are different in some qualitative way that makes it impossible for us to do what they did. I think the message from both the Buddha and the mystics is that we are supposed to follow that path -- that spiritual masters showed the way for us to follow, not bow down to them. In the book, Opening the Hand of Thought, Uchiyama Roshi tells the story about the end of the Buddha's life. Ananda said he would bring people to him, but the Buddha refused. He didn't want to be worshipped. He shared the path we need to walk. He wanted us to walk it.

In Opening the Hand of Thought, Uchiyama Roshi wrote, "I’m concerned with how a person, any person, who is completely naked of any religious or philosophical clothes, can live out their life fruitfully." Normal Fischer said, "I don't care what's Zen and what's not Zen." I believe the spiritual path existed before and beyond the religions that rose up to describe it. Different language, different styles, different stories and conventions, but same message. We are both earth and air, something and nothing, divine and human. Not one, not two. Concretize the eternal. "Don't confuse the finger pointing at the moon with the moon itself." This is why I don't worry about adhering to one religion and love to investigate the wisdom of all of them. The Buddha wasn't a Buddhist when he actualized; he was just a guy who dealt with his shit. Buddhism developed over the 2500 years since he was alive. So much has been added by other men who came after him, while the path remains the path. No matter how various men dress up, the moon still shines.

However, as Matthew Brensilver said in one of his talks on a recent retreat, "We all need something to bow down to." We all need to feel a sense of awe, of something larger than ourselves, of the mystery that enfolds us. The ocean is that worthy object of worship, certainly, and I love the mystics, because, like the Buddhists and Taoists, they point to something else. Finley said, “What the mystics are, are men and women who, through mystical experiences, they're touched by the realization that even now down in the deep down depths of things, that God is welling up and giving herself away in and as every breath and heartbeat. And when they taste the oneness, when they taste that taste of oneness, see, then in moments we taste that, we're like a momentary mystic. [The mystics] bear witness that it's possible to be habitually established in that oneness. Instead of a momentary little flash of it, God resting in us resting in God, and the desire to habituate it can be consummated as abiding union.”

Abiding union. The nonduality of duality. Separate from separation. It was BTG who put me in touch with the language of oneness, of Zen, of a deeper Buddhism than what I was learning elsewhere. His book recommendations provided perfectly placed stepping stones on the path. He was willing to do a type of therapy that I had always wanted to do -- a Jungian type of therapy that combined spirituality with psychodynamic analysis. I believe they are not two different paths, but two names for the same path. You can't really do one without the other and be complete. Zennies are no less mystical than the mystics. Merton actually started an interfaith dialogue with Shunryū Suzuki, the Zen monk who wrote Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind. There was a lot of common ground. I'm so grateful that BTG trusted me to do that kind of therapy. It was a rare and beautiful experience. I will remember it all too well. And who knows? After some months, I might restart therapy. BTG left the door open. Heaven knows, there's more to heal.

Finley continues, “Then the mystic teachers such as Merton, they offer guidance to people who feel interiorly called to that. Shunro Suzuki, the Soto Zen Master, says the primary task of the teacher in these traditions is to give witness to the seeker that what the seeker seeks is real.” I have had too many of those experiences of numinosity, of oneness, to not believe in something. Twenty years ago, I had that "on your knees on the bathroom floor at 3 am" moment in which I was in such pain, such pain and fear, that I called out for help into the void and was immediately filled with a quiet peace. More recently, I had that moment on the waves at San Onofre where I felt intimately connected to an energy moving through everything -- the waves, the dolphins, the ocean, and my own body. On that hillside in Sedona, I felt it again. So much so I considered a long-term goal of living in a monastery, taking proper Buddhist vows. It's something I've thought about for years, and that desire was rekindled after Sedona. However, I think that's not for me. In the middle of the dark night, on the ocean or in the desert, that energy is there. It exists within my life as it is right now. I don't experience it as loving necessarily, but peaceful. I think this is what religions grew up around. I think this is what they are trying to describe. So, I'll just focus on that feeling and skip the robes. Oneness. Love. Compassion. Interbeing. I'll stick to a wetsuit.

My religion is surfing. It's just as good as anything else. I'm not sitting in a temple, or a pew, or on a cushion in a monastery trying to feel transcendence or the connection with all things -- I'm sitting in the water connected with all things. I'm flowing with the energy of the water, of waves cresting and falling, of breath going in and out, of living, dying, starting again. I'm doing it over and over and over again. It's more than a spiritual practice. It is spirit itself. Life itself. Out there in the blue mass, we're all one.

In his book Aflame: Learning From Silence, about staying frequently in a Catholic monastery near Big Sur, Pico Iyer writes, “If you’re freed of all distinctions, there’s no need of words like ‘God.’ Twelve years of enforced chapel at school, every morning and every evening, have left me with an aversion to all crosses and hymnals. In any case, I’ve never wanted to be part of any group of believers. The globe is too wide, too various, to assume one knows it all. So why am I exultant to find myself in the silence of this Catholic monastery? Maybe because there’s no “I” to get in the way of the exultancy. Only the brightness of the blue above and below. That red-tailed hawk circling, the bees busy in the lavender. It’s as if a lens cap has come off and once the self is gone, the world can come flooding in, in all its wild immediacy.” The self is gone -- emptiness. The blue mass above and below. Seem like more than adequate beings to bow down to. Mother Ocean puts me in my place every time I go in. She requires I bow.

Thomas Merton's famous quote: "What is serious to men is often very trivial in the sight of God. What in God might appear to us as 'play' is perhaps what he Himself takes most seriously. At any rate, the Lord plays and diverts Himself in the garden of His creation, and if we could let go of our own obsession with what we think is the meaning of it all, we might be able to hear His call and follow Him in His mysterious, cosmic dance. We do not have to go very far to catch echoes of that game, and of that dancing. When we are alone on a starlit night; when by chance we see the migrating birds in autumn descending on a grove of junipers to rest and eat; when we see children in a moment when they are really children; when we know love in our own hearts; or when, like the Japanese poet Bashō we hear an old frog land in a quiet pond with a solitary splash--at such times the awakening, the turning inside out of all values, the "newness," the emptiness and the purity of vision that make themselves evident, provide a glimpse of the cosmic dance.

"For the world and time are the dance of the Lord in emptiness. The silence of the spheres is the music of a wedding feast. The more we persist in misunderstanding the phenomena of life, the more we analyze them out into strange finalities and complex purposes of our own, the more we involve ourselves in sadness, absurdity and despair. But it does not matter much, because no despair of ours can alter the reality of things; or stain the joy of the cosmic dance which is always there. Indeed, we are in the midst of it, and it is in the midst of us, for it beats in our very blood, whether we want it to or not. Yet the fact remains that we are invited to forget ourselves on purpose, cast our awful solemnity to the winds and join in the general dance."

Norman Fischer said, "After you realize all dharmas are empty, karuna (compassion) naturally arises. When you realize there's only this flow of experience, all of us together flowing along, there is not me and no you -- there's only this gushing flow of reality with all of the pain that is involved in it -- to eat, to live, as a human being, as any sentient being -- any eating is killing and we're doing this for one another. We're sacrificing for one another, it's a very pathetic (pathos) situation to be alive together as empty dharmas. How do we not love each other and fully identify with each other? How is emptiness not only ever compassion? All of Buddhism is a reflex of love." Compassion: suffering with; when loving kindness meets suffering and stays loving.

"To know the self is to forget the self," said Zen Master Dogen. Buddhism is a practice of constantly turning inward, allowing our ego attachments -- greed, hatred, delusion -- to rise up and burn off. BTG said once that he was there to shine a light on me, on my delusions. I often saw him as a lighthouse. From my position in the rudderless boat on the stormy sea, he was a light-filled presence who guided me home, who guided me to see my own light. My meditation practice is a daily effort to maintain that light. Releasing much of my selfing, I've loosened up, found a more supple kind of strength -- surfer strength -- and oceans of compassion. I aspire to be a longboarder. Longboard surfing is elegant, graceful, responsive, relaxed. It's joyful and playful atop softer waves. It's focused, but in a way that joins with the flow of life, open. An open awareness.

Gil Fronsdahl said, "The deeper we go into body-mind states, flow states appear and they take over. We don't have to do it. Who is doing the spiritual path? Our self and then, at some point, surrender, grace, something else is there that we tap into.... Over time, we become an instrument. The dharma is practicing us. We are trusting some deeper process of healing, opening, liberating. You can't really say it's me. We show up and something else takes over." To find that something else -- that oneness within, that ability to flow with life itself, to be one with it, allow it to flow through me -- that is my vow in and out of the water. I forget my self and flow, and when I'm surfing, I'm doing that, enacting that, embodying that in a real way. The moon itself.

I've been sensing an ending coming for months now. My light is clean -- cleaner than it has ever been. It will need cleaning again tomorrow. I will sit on my cushion every day, a ritual of belonging to oneness, to the larger forces at play in the world. I will sit on a surfboard every week celebrating a blue mass that posits Ocean as Buddha, Surfing as Dharma, and Sisterhood as Sangha. Sister Water, Salacia, Amphitrite, my teacher and friend, will hear my prayers, hold my tears, and deepen my silence. Her own force, both quietly erasing mountains with gentle streams and forcefully carving coastlines with pounding strength, is well worth bowing to. I will kneel for the blue mass as often as possible, bow forward to pour my self out. The constant waves smoothing the edges of my soul, allowing me to play in the emptiness.

Sun rises and sets. Light and dark pass into dark and light.

Breath inhales and exhales.

Hearts beat and rest in between beats.

Clouds form and dissipate. Waves crest and fall.

Love is given and received. I am no exception.

The Coming of Light

Even this late it happens:

the coming of love, the coming of light.

You wake and the candles are lit as if by themselves,

stars gather, dreams pour into your pillows,

sending up warm bouquets of air.

Even this late the bones of the body shine

and tomorrow's dust flares into breath.

by Mark Strand