Perfection of Melancholy

 After teaching an on-line retreat last weekend for Irish mindfulness trainees and teachers, I was inspired to go back to a book I bought, on the recommendation of Irish friends, the last time I was in Dublin.  Who knows how long it will be, if ever, that I walk down those beautiful, green-lined, busy streets?  

The book, "Are You Somebody?" is a memoir by the late Irish journalist Nuala O'Faolain, a wild and daring writer about Irish culture, feminism, and the movement in Ireland from narrow poverty to cultural openness that she witnessed during her lifetime.  

She writes about a breakdown she had just before turning 40, after the deaths of both her parents and before she became sober.  (She, like her parents, and most of her friends and partners, was an alcoholic.)

Here is her recollection of those last days before sobriety, which echo the feeling many of us have had during these oppressive days of life during the pandemics, now 5 months in.  

"An aspect of being vulnerable is that you are very open.  I used to lie on the bed and look at the sky as it very, very slowly got dark on summer evenings.  There was a kind of perfection of melancholy.  On Sunday mornings, or on Bank Holiday weekends, I had absolutely nothing to do but feel the quiet.  In a way, I was with my self very fully.  Afterwards, I used to miss the feeling of being held within pure, empty space."

Maybe you have found that the enforced solitude has been a strange kind of gift, helping you find your way to something beyond the identity with a self that is active and productive and ignorant of suffering.  This is the formula for Zen practice, too.  Sit still, feel everything, as far as you can bear it, and see what happens.  Perhaps you, too, will feel held within the pure, empty space of this wondrous life.

A Zoom Retreat in Ireland

 Earlier today David and I finished teaching a four day retreat in Ireland, hosted by the Mindfulness Centre.  Our hosts were the talented and warm teachers Helen Byrne and Josephine Lynch, and the photo here is one of three screens showing the 75 participants.  As with all of our retreats online since the pandemic began in March, it was deep and profound.  Moving back and forth between formal practice and daily life, we all had a taste of how meditation practice allows us to make our lives whole, no matter what we have to deal with.  The world is on fire, and we can learn to sit with all that is happening, in order to act to help with the healing.  

Mindfulness in Paradise -- pre-apocalypse edition

Looking at entries to this blog this morning, I found one that was never completed -- a draft from an earlier era.  It's amazing to think about our lives before the pandemic.  Personally, even though I enjoy science fictions books, television shows and movies that are set after some sort of planetary apocalypse, my imagination never fully encompassed what it might be like to actually live through the events that have unfolded since the this photo was taken.

The group pictured here has gone on to have a regular Zoom meditation session, and of course we at Boundless Way Temple have also been carrying on our Temple practice daily.  (You can find out more information about our Temple Zoom sessions here:    www.worcesterzen.org.

This weekend over 40 of us have been doing an experimental Zoom sesshin, an intensive meditation retreat.  Alas, Zoom appears to have crashed world-wide earlier this morning, so we are on hold until we can connect once again.  And so this opportunity to complete this post from the dream-world of the past:

Back in early February, I spent a week teaching mindfulness with my good friend and colleague Florence Meleo-Meyer, in Costa Rica.  We were at the Blue Spirit Resort on the Pacific Coast, founded by Stephan Rechtschaffen, who also founded the Omega Institute.  Florence and I have been teaching a week of mindfulness-based stress reduction, mostly to North Americans and Europeans, in Costa Rica for the past 16 years.  This year we had a particularly dedicated and wonderful group -- everyone was fully committed to attending the class, even though the beach, monkeys, surfing and massage therapists beckoned.  Here is a photo taken by a friend from another group at Blue Spirit, picturing our amazing group.  We shared deeply about our lives back home, and found ways to investigate all the ways we get caught in old stressful patterns.  Knowing what is present allows us to find freedom in every moment.  Even though we were in an unusually beautiful place, we all recognized that no matter where we go, here we are!  (As Jon Kabat-Zinn and Buckaroo Banzai both said in slightly different language. )