I hadn’t posted for a while when a long-time reader nudged me into action. “I wanted to send along peace and love as I know you have had challenges with your health of late and I am truly hopeful that you are feeling much better. Haven’t received a blog post in some time and at first I did not want to intrude but I felt compelled to be maternal and check in on you.”
I bow in gratitude for these words of encouragement — as I do to myriad cards, visits, errands, rides to-and-from, flowers, and homemade-soups-at-the-door.
During the last 15 weeks, one illness has chased another: from total knee replacement surgery to near-fatal blood infection, followed by weeks of post-sepsis syndrome and now, and to the end of days, early-stage leukemia (CCL).
The Buddha taught that suffering is a fact of life, that it can descend on us at any time in its many forms: physically, as in birth, old age, sickness, and death, and emotionally, when things don’t go our way and others don’t behave as we wish them to. (You could substitute suffering with pain, unhappiness, stress, anxiety, loss, or anguish [1], all depending on its severity and state of mind.)
As Frank Ostaseski writes, “there is pain, from which there is no escaping, and then there is suffering, which we can do something about. Many times we have no control over [what] causes us pain. But we can shift our relationship to the thoughts about and the emotional reaction to the pain, which frequently intensify our suffering.” [2]
To which Rumi would say [3]: A joy, a depression, a pain, a broken heart. / Welcome them all! / Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows, / who violently sweep your house / empty of its furniture, / treat each a guest. / Offer bread and wine. /
Welcome everything.
A guided meditation on welcoming everything. The recording stops after 14 minutes (my error) but works fine just as it is . . .
.
. . and continues for another 5 minutes if you wish:
[1] For a list of substitute terms, see: Wallis, G. (May 1, 2008). What is dukka? Lion’s Roar. [2] Ostaseski, F. (2017). The five invitations: Discovering what death can teach us about living fully, p. 90. Flatiron Books. [3] Based on his poem The Guest House.
Sending happy healthy loving belated birthday wishes Peter!
🙏👍🕉☯️❤️😎
Aah, dear one, you are such a blessing to our world. We are holding you in our hearts and hoping there are no black dogs about, only dear, sweet Waldi.
Nine bows.
the black dogs you speak of, a.k.a. depression, were nowhere to be seen during these many months. Perhaps illness demanded all available resources, had no bones to feed them. Perhaps my mind hovered just below the surface, barely conscious, in a space where neither happiness nor despair felt welcome.
Peter, Where have you been?…. in our hearts and thoughts and prayers and daily meditation…. part of the tapestry of our lives, you are inspiration, teacher and helper along our paths. Thank you for sharing your journey with us, and these meditations to light our way. And by your example, showing us the blessing of accepting help in our suffering. May your moments of peace become longer and greater than the pain and fear. With gratitude, blessings on your journey. Namaste, Sally
So, we’re connected, through thick and thin. I savour your words of kindness, then let them go. They belong to all beings. . You’re such a blessing to the world.
All these caring actions show how much you and your posts are appreciated…!.
When suffering continues to visit me and I become weaker and overwhelmed in the moment I find I need some kind of talisman to guide us toward loving kindness toward ourselves and our suffering. I use my baby picture and I find that I can be kind and loving to that baby in a very existential way. Without that talisman I tend to get lost in my suffering and it becomes harder to re-ground myself.
In gratitude for all your service and what you have meant to me over these many years.
Loving kindness for you and your exhausting guests.
Peace
just now, having sat in meditation with my various imperfections, I embrace them all: May I be kind to my longing for wisdom. My I be welcome my ageing body. May I see the joy in everything, right now: the birds, the emerging day, the sunshine, my hands as they type, my skin as it contains this body, my heart as it aches for affection. May i be grateful for … this.
For anyone wanting more of Peter’s words, you can read his dissertation “Vulnerable to possibilities: a journey of self-knowing through personal narrative https://open.library.ubc.ca/cIRcle/collections/ubctheses/831/items/1.0090614
Peter, I am listening to your “Loving Kindness” tracks on Doyogawithme and find your voice so calming, I feel like you’re holding me up.
However did you unearth that old document, Virginia? Thank you. I recall what Thomas Merton put in the foreword for a new translation of a book he’d written 20 years earlier: “The man who wrote that book has died.” Ditto for me. Even my thesis advisor is gone to join the poets in their heaven. Peter
Yes, I understand, but your words from 20 years ago still speak! Your dissertation was helpful to me, being in the same EdD program and contemplating narrative inquiry, as I created my own dissertation. I completed it three summers ago, and I too feel that that person has died, or more like that that person has shed their skin like a snake does, yet the essence of who I was then and who I am today, is the same. In the loving kindness tracks I have two photos of myself that I switch back and forth depending on the moment – one is the newborn photo taken in the hospital, and another is a school-age child on summer vacation reading a book while cocooned in the sails of the mast. Same essence, different layers.