Listen
with the night falling we are saying thank you
we are stopping on the bridges to bow from the railings1
As many of you know, I had an accident in late August, which led to a series of challenging events: surgery to pin a broken leg; influenza A contracted in hospital; surgery to replace a dislocated hip. A full-body reaction to a medication. The literal trembling––and failure––of my heart. There has been a hiatus, followed by a slow path of recovery and healing, which led me back to my home on September 30. The honesty of health and wellness is astonishing––as is the truth that we are vulnerable. Anything can happen at any time. Though we can influence some of the causes and conditions in our lives that foster our well-being and that of others––and that of the whole world––we are not in control.
Longtime Dharma teacher Christina Feldman explains that her most recent understanding of the meaning of the Pali word dukkha (which has been traditionally translated as suffering and more recently as stress) is vulnerability. We are all vulnerable to things going wrong in big and small ways. I was walking along the sidewalk paying attention to where I was, the movement of my body, the cracks in the pavement, involved in the process of an expected momentum, quietly carrying plans for a future that never happened––that will never happen.
Right now, it’s like this (practice phrase from Ajahn Sumedho)
That expected life’s momentum died, right then and there. What unfolded instead has had its own unique form of the remarkable: experience after experience filled with care, compassion, wisdom, efficiency. Filled with pain, confusion, despair. Filled with faith and the habits of a well-trained (for 50 years!) mind. Filled with gratitude, awe, and joy.
It began in mid-air. On my way into a fall, I knew, as I remembered the last line of the Buddha’s five subjects for frequent recollection that “I am the owner of my experience, born of my experience, heir to my experience, supported by my experience. Whatever experiences I engage in, for good or for ill, of the results I shall be the heir.” There was no going back and no known way forward.
“Mindfulness is the ingenious method of turning an obstacle to our path into an object that can be known,” wrote Bhikkhu Analayo in an early book on mindfulness. Remembering this and other teachings, a strong commitment to bring mindfulness to each moment of the experience as it evolved arose in me. As events continued to develop, I paused often to invite mindfulness and its supporting factors: interest, energy, joy (an appreciative, open-heartedness), some calm, a commitment to inclusivity (not turning anything away), and balance.
Compassion, the love that doesn’t turn away. The series of experiences that build themselves into a subjective version of the story of these past two months are filled with compassion and an abiding sense of caring. My body hit the hard cement curbstone, left hip first. Hooray that my head didn’t hit the pavement, my hand didn’t suffer the impact––just the left greater trochanter area of my left leg––the outermost beginning of what we call the hip. A young man saw me on the ground and came over immediately. He explained that he was a skateboarder and knew about this kind of fall firsthand. He suggested I was experiencing “an adrenaline high” and told me to relax. A young woman quickly joined us. I took a few minutes’ pause and then told them I wanted to see if I could stand on my own. I rolled to my side and sat at the edge of the curb. I could stand up, fairly easily, but there was no strength in my left leg at all. The anonymous young man and woman helped me stagger to a stone wall where I could rest my weight. Within minutes, a mother, arms full of groceries and two daughters ages seven and nine following close behind, appeared. Her car was parked across from us. Without hesitation, she proposed that she take me to Alice Peck Day Hospital, which was about eight minutes away. I was helped into the car. Though I had not been riding my bike, I had it with me. The young man offered to take it home for me. I gave him my address as I left for the hospital. (I found the bike there in my barn a week later when I arrived home for the first time.)
When we got to the hospital, I stayed in the car with the kids while their mom got a nurse and a wheel chair from the Emergency Department. I was admitted; scans and X-rays were done; my dear friends and health-care proxies came to the ED within the hour. We shared information and joked with the staff. It was determined that I needed trauma surgery and needed to be transferred to the larger hospital. By midnight, I was there talking with the surgeon who had already seen my test results. Surgery was scheduled for noon the next day.
Metta, the love that connects. It became very clear to me that I was meeting, and interacting with, lots of people in a very short period of time. The story, the collection of experiences, arises in real time from this shared, relational world. So, in fact, this story is not just my story; it is the story of tens upon tens of people––perhaps a hundred or more––who I came to know with varying degrees of intimacy. The Buddha teaches that we should be mindful internally (like me assessing my injuries, trusting my new street friends and the head of surgery alike); externally (aware of the joys and sorrows, needs, and expectations of the others involved); and BOTH internally and externally (aware of this life-stream spontaneously arising––this series of words, gestures, thoughts––in real time). My awareness of, and commitment to, the necessity of mindfulness––as a quality of relational awareness to cultivate here and now––became stronger than ever. Its presence would be invaluable––a matter of life and death.
Bhikkhu Analayo explains: “Although mindfulness requires cultivation, being a quality that needs to be established, such cultivation is not a forceful matter . . . . [Instead] sati can be understood as a receptive assimilating with the potential of giving birth to new perspectives. . . . Visualizing the practice in terms of a coming back to the presence of a good friend helps to avoid mistaking sati for a forceful type of hyper-attentiveness that requires strained effort in order to be maintained. Instead, being in her presence carries the flavors of an open receptivity and a soft alertness to whatever is taking place.”
Mudita (“Appreciative Joy”), the love that celebrates. I experienced a lot of kind, good-hearted caregivers: the licensed nursing assistants who tended to my personal needs with patience and intention; the nurses who provided supervision, care and support; the people who brought my meals, and the cooks who cooked them; the doctors who explained and engaged in conversations. I became close to a member of the cleaning crew, who cleaned the room as I tried to speak Spanish and she English. Each person I met and interacted with had, and was, an evolving story. Not so surprisingly, all the stories revolve around dukkha, vulnerability, stress––having to deal with that which we do not love. And, all of the stories involve great joy and a sense of appreciative love. Each person I met displayed and lived their own variation of goodness and caring into our shared world.
Equanimity, the love that allows. Very soon into this startling journey, I turned on the Mindfulness Bell app on my phone. (It’s a free, easily downloadable app.) I set it to ring every half hour of the day to help me to remember mindfulness, to remind me to pause, relax, open, and experience this very moment. Over time, I began to also know the fullness of each mindful experience as a birth––as the beginning of the rest of my life. Literally. Seen in this way, each moment is a formative experience. My body’s birth 80 years ago in Passaic, New Jersey, was, I am told, a difficult and chaotic one. I was stuck in the birth canal; forceps were used; my father, calling in from work, was told I had died. He didn’t know the truth until he arrived at the hospital an hour later. These peaceful, joyful moments that I was experiencing with the aid of the Mindfulness Bell were so unlike that. Always, as I paused and paid attention at all the sense doors in these moments, there was kindness. Calm was easily apparent, along with an appreciative connection and a soft joy––the subtle, and not always subtle, joy of being alive. In the words of Marie Howe, “This moment has never happened before and it will never happen again. / Try to be fully present.”
1 Lines quoted here are from the poem “Thanks” by W. S. Merwin (Copper Canyon Press, 2005), which I memorized during my second hospitalization, twelve days at APD.