Because Some Days You Just Can't Take Another Step...

I often feel like this baby elephant - and I am profoundly grateful for my "herd."  They surround, encourage, and help me up when it feels like I just can't take another step - never judging me for just collapsing in the road, but never letting me stay there either.  Sangha...

The Buddha Inside

The Buddha Inside

Today is one of 

Those days

When just moving

Feels like Sisyphus

Pushing the boulder

Up the mountain

And watching it 

Roll down again

Dropping to this cushion

Feels welcoming

And sacred

Nothing to do or be

Breathing in

Touching the grieving

The vast emptiness

The clutching fear

Breathing out

With understanding

Others feel this too

Over and over again

Coming back

Forgetting

Remembering

Resting

Held close

By the buddha inside

Of this breaking

Awakening heart.

c.sharshel 

6/1/2015

Anicca

It is not impermanence that makes us suffer.  What makes us 

suffer is wanting things to be permanent when they are not. 

~Thich Nhat Hanh~

Anicca - the absence of continuity, the absence of permanence...one of the three marks of existence.

Pema Chodron says "Nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know."  I am in such a season of sorrow and devastation just now.  What is it that I need to know?  What if I never learn what I need to know?  How may this unrelenting grief serve to awaken this already ravaged heart?

Today, it is easy

To sit in this chair

And anchor myself

Into this moment

My only task to notice

The sounds of the space

Arriving and departing

With an open heart, welcoming

With an open heart, letting go

If only it were so simple

After the bell

When the ground

Beneath me crumbles

When you are here

When you are not

Touching impermanence

With an open heart

Welcoming…
With an open heart

...letting go.

c.sharshel 5/28/2015

Dharma is Everywhere

Truth, teachings, the nature of reality.  Every moment is my teacher.  Today I saw a coffee cup with a fundamental truth of how we forget and then need to come back home.  Where I least expected it, the lesson was waiting.

Dharma is everywhere.

When the student is ready, the teacher will appear...

Metta - Morphosis

Metta-Morphosis

Darkness illuminated

Through fresh cracks

In weathered armor

Soaked and softened

By loving intention

Tender flesh opening

Into the vast space

Of loving awareness
Unafraid and undefended
Trusting these fragile wings
As they develop
And unfold exactly

How they are meant to be

Beautifully unique

Spreading into flight

On the winds

Of lovingkindness

Awakening transformation

Metta-morphosis

A wish for 

All beings everywhere...

c.sharshel

12/18/2014

An Accidental Bodhisattva

In the Majjhima Nikaya scriptures, the Buddha said:

“The purpose of the holy life does not consist in acquiring merit, honor, or fame, nor in gaining morality, concentration or the eye of knowledge.  The purpose is that unshakeable deliverance, the Sure Heart’s Release, that indeed is the object of this holy life - that is its essence, that is its goal.”

This new blog is a project that feels like the opening chapter of a brand new book.  For those reading who do not know, I am in recovery from, well, almost everything.  I've been kicked around the mental health system with more diagnoses and acronyms than I can rattle off in the space of a page.  And then there was the addiction.  Prison got me clean and sober and I had been that way for 7 years when I realized that I was just going through the motions to get from one day to the next.  Everything was gray and empty and I honestly was coming close to just giving up on myself and any hope that real serenity was possible.  I found myself stumbling around in a spiritual wilderness trying to make sense of myself and the world and establish at least some semblance of fragile peace moving into the second half of this life on earth.

And so I went back to therapy...it was really all I could think to do.  A randomly chosen therapist that uses mindfulness techniques to treat depression and anxiety pointed me to one of her favorite teachers, Tara Brach, and all of the resources available on her website.  From there, I was led to books, and instruction, and community...and all of this seemed to come together to create a real desire in me to stop the war that I had been waging against myself for my entire adult life and really learn to tune in and bring a sense of love and care to my heart.  So I listened.  To anyone that would talk to me about it.  I listened online, I listened in person,  I read everything that I could get my hands on (much of which I didn't understand at all).  And I meditated.  Ok, at first I sat quietly and ruminated.  For months, I sat quietly and ruminated.  But I did it every day, and, eventually surprised myself with the realization that I had just spent 30 minutes watching crazy thoughts come and go without engaging them.  Suddenly, I felt like a real Buddhist...a very unlikely Buddhist.

For more than 4 years...the dharma has been my very best friend.  My practice has held me up through everything that has come my way, no matter how steadfastly I doubted it would.  I find comfort here in this awareness of what is real and true...on some days, I can even call it peace.

I stumbled upon this path of compassion and awakening when I needed it most, and when I expected it the least.  I guess you could call me an accidental Bodhisattva...

And it changes me for the better every single day.