Credit: MCPhotographNYC

For almost two years, I lived at the Center for Mindful Learning, now located in Johnson, Vermont. It is true that, if given the choice, I would have never gone. But sometimes life is so gracious as to offer us this choiceless opportunity, to step into and out of something our conscious minds and our egos would very cleverly squirm, reason and doubt their way out of. The truth is I wanted healing, but I didn’t want to, or know how to, change the internal patterns that were wounding me.

What I learned through practice and life at CML is that you can only walk so far on the path without becoming the path. That separation, and the incredibly creative and masterful efforts we put into keeping life and our practice separate, is what wounds us.

Like many of us, I had ideas about what my life would be like. And often my practice informs these ideas, slowly changing them to be less and less about me and more an expression and manifestation of life. But even these ideas, “the good ones”, come up short.

As I leave the monastery, I find myself watching and asking with curiosity, “What is happening?” I see myself shaping ideas and incredible images of What I Will Do Now. And as soon as I gather up these delicious ideas and attempt to stand and move from them, suffering begins.

Once when I was really struggling, which I should add could be a prefix for most sentences about my time at CML, Soryu and I spoke after evening chanting. At this point in my training, I was fighting really hard, unwilling to give up an idea about the life I thought I should have. “I am an artist. I have this performance. It’s important. The world needs to see it. This is what I’m supposed to do and I can’t do it here!” Soryu never said anything about my clinging to the performance or to my identity as an artist. There’s no way I would have listened. But on this one night, months after my performance had come and gone, I’d grown so tired of holding onto this idea of who I was, that I let go… and decided, “He’s right. It’s not about the performance. It’s not about me being an artist. It’s about Walking Across the Country.”

He kindly listened to my newly discovered passion and conviction and said so gently, “Can you imagine how you would have reacted if I told you, back then, that it wasn’t about the performance?” We both laughed knowing I would have thrown a temper tantrum. And then he said, “and now I’m going to tell you, it’s not about walking across the country. It is far bigger than you can ever imagine.”

Each next image of who I am, what my life should be or the direction I am going is only as useful as the breath that gets me there. I don’t know what I’m “going to do next” and yet I trust that I’m already doing it.

I trust this practice.
I trust that there is an effortlessness that comes when I allow the practice to live me.
And in that trusting, I may never need to choose again.
We become the choiceless choice,
and life begins to live us.

A community member who is writing a book about Soryu’s teachings and the residents at CML recently interviewed my dad about my time at the monastery. My dad said, “It’s not a path I would have chosen for her, but I trust her. I had to believe that she was seeking what was best for her…”

It is true, I never would have chosen this path.
And I thank God that I don’t have to.

                                                …Not any more..

                                                                                                       Let’s try it this way!

                            Now this way.

                                                                                                                                                         Okay, scratch that.. Let’s do it this way.[/su_quote]

[su_dropcap style=”flat”]L[/su_dropcap]iving as a resident at CML often feels like living in a laboratory. We are constantly experimenting to learn how we can most effectively bring mindfulness to the world.

Does this work? Yes!.. Not any more… Let’s try it this way.. Now this way.. Okay, scratch that.. Let’s do it this way.

Instead of experiencing this, openly, as an exercise of impermanence and practice of non-attachment – it more often feels like a conclusively hopeless and ongoing repetition of failure (dappled with a flare of a shame here and there).

When recounting this to the head mindfulness instructor here, Soryu’s response was as follows: “This is great! The best case scenario is that we try our hardest and still fail.”[su_pullquote]“This is great! The best case scenario is that we try our hardest and still fail”[/su_pullquote] Intellectually, I understand this.  Our learning potential is maximized when we are open to being confused, lost or not knowing. Got it!

Do I accept this experientially? Mostly no.

[su_dropcap style=”flat”]I[/su_dropcap]nstead, for most of my life, I have experienced failure as a mark of shame.

Can’t fail. Don’t fail. Can’t be wrong. Don’t let people see that you don’t know. Always right. Always right. Always right.

I’ve been aware of these thought patterns for sometime, but recently I have started to explore this insatiable desire to be right at a deeper level.  What inspired this exploration?

Ferguson.

[su_dropcap style=”flat”]I[/su_dropcap] find myself on facebook a lot these days, following conversations about the pervasiveness of racism in our culture. I listen to all sides of the conversation and watch my thoughts and emotional reactions to what people say and what I believe. I’m often hesitant to participate. I’m not sure if this is because I want to listen and learn from the conversation or because I’m afraid to speak for fear of ‘not getting it right.’ Maybe a little bit of both. [su_quote]But as I look closer I think, “Isn’t this the time to not get it right?” – to see where my prejudices are? To open myself to learn?[/su_quote]

I make judgments based on race, class, sex and gender a lot. And for a long time I felt ashamed of these thoughts. I thought that in order to love all life unconditionally I needed to always have loving thoughts about all life. But this isn’t true. Thank goodness! It’s actually relieving to watch my thoughts without judgement, no matter what they are.

So when I feel uncomfortable about the content of my thoughts there is good news:

1) These thoughts could very well be informing me of how to take right action in the world,

and

2) I am not my thoughts.

The alternative to living this understanding is a life nested in the delusion that I know – and, I don’t.

This delusion continues the cycle of hatred and ignorance in our country.

This is how I participate in the cycle AND this is how I can break it.

[su_dropcap style=”flat”]I[/su_dropcap]t is important to see how we participate and own that. I REPEAT, it is important to see how we participate. It’s easy to say we don’t participate with words (because who wants participate in the creation of such suffering?). Delusion is easy. It takes courage to see clearly. And I didn’t come for delusion. I came for freedom.

So I ask us all: Can we practice being “wrong”? Can we have courage to see clearly how we are participating in this cycle of ignorance?

What inspires me to say “yes” to these questions, with my whole life, is that it has become apparent that living in this way is no longer about me, about what I believe. It is about the  preservation of life. There is a force far greater than any concept I have of who I am, asking me to love all life unconditionally. And Mike Brown, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice and the countless others who have died because these conversations never existed were beautiful, living, breathing human beings that deserved life and unconditional love.

-Denise Casey

To learn more about residents involved in our Monastic Mindfulness Training Program, click here – get to know our residents, engage with our programs, offering and free media and consider signing up for one of our trainings or applying to the CEDAR Monastic Mindfulness Training Program.