How Was Your Trip?

side of a truck that's been graffitied, paris, june 2013

It's the first question I get upon returning from Europe each summer.
Sometimes I get it when I take smaller teaching trips - Toronto, Chicago, even.
But there's nothing quite like being gone for five weeks to Europe.

It's a fair question to ask. A kind one. And one I often don't want to answer. Here's why.

Actions Actually DO Speak Louder Than Words

...which feels ironic to write in words...

I'm not dumb. I know there's an inherent conflict in even writing about how I have experienced, more and more, that statement to be true, that age-old adage:

Actions Speak Louder Than Words.

I just can't get over how true it is, perhaps because I listen to, write, and share so many words every day, all the time. Reading books, articles, blogs; writing manuscripts, poems, essays, emails; listening to raw writings, soulful conversations and even the radio. I often say my classes are so that we know that not everything arises in finished form - that a good, solid start from the heart is necessary for clear writing, but of course when all we read is finished product, we think all the fineries - great editing, structural reconsiderations, etc, should come, too, in the first draft. I say a lot of smart and insightful things, and I even believe some of them, truly, deeply. Words are awfully sexy and wise.

Elimination

Emails
Weight
Allergens
Digestion issues
Money issues
Dust
Weeds
Books
Magazines

I've spent the last week or so working through piles of things, of excess, as they say, in all of these areas. So much time eliminating, in fact, that I forgot to catch up on doing, building, adding: preparing for a teacher training I am teaching this weekend, preparing for my weekly college course that starts next week - Next Week! How Did That Happen?! Of course I have been writing, but I also am not as close to getting my manuscript - proposal for Bermuda Triangles memoir - out the door to the press I want to buy it up. August 31st was my internal deadline - get it gone, out the door, before I begin teaching another course.
Another course.

I always forget until fall comes how hard it is to teach just one more day. With my weekly classes, which began 3 weeks ago, I push hard Monday through Wednesday until late, then Thursday I feel a bit liberated. If I go out of town to teach over the weekend, which I do usually every other week, or even teach over the weekend in town, like this weekend, then Thursday and Friday are my weekend. But once I start at Marquette, I lose Thursday to commute time, prep and teaching. When I do the online courses in the spring for Junior High kids, my time is more flexible - I can log on whenever, and the bulk of my work fades into the early week, as their online deadline is always Monday.

Fall is my favorite season, but this fall, I feel like I am falling into it. The summer was overloaded with big harvests in many ways, and I am wading through the excess, plucking out what I need. Can one have too much dharma, too much goodness, too much support? I suppose I need to pace myself, let it all last into the long, cold winter. Right now I want to push it all out the door and have a simpler situation so I can get done with some work, and have some down time. That sounds ironic, of course, but as a very wise friend said recently to me in a letter "You love your work, but even your work that you love can strangle you if you're not careful." Indeed.

So while it is true that I am rich, the richness needs niches, needs places to be stored for a bit. I can't eat all of it right now, can't wade through all of it - I need it to rest, I need to rest, so I can move forward out of the absorption stage of summer and into the working world of fall and winter and spring. Oh Academic schedule! How I was raised on you as a student, and a daughter of a father who taught. The gluttony of summer turns over in my mind and slims down into the follies of fall; rosters, schedules, grades, emails, readings, classes.

Dream/Reality

Last night, before meditation at the Shambhala Center, I finally did one of the practices I was given at the 10-day retreat I did a week or so ago. I hadn't made space for it at home yet, and we had the supplies at the center, so since I was a bit early for setting up, I settled in and did it.

A practice I had done again and again for a week in a tent full of 100 people became, for me, intensely concentrated with just me alone in the silence of my local center's shrine room. In just 10 minutes of practicing, a LOT changed, shifted and I felt completely opened.

After meditation and cleaning up, I went home to do ordinary household things with Dylan - mow the lawn, weed, water our fruit plants/trees (strawberry plants, raspberry bushes, pear tree), etc. It was a cool evening, few mosquitoes, and the yard felt utterly alive to me. I slept heavily, fed by the hard work, though it took me awhile to go down, so entranced with the perfect evening air.

After the cats woke me at 5am, I went back to sleep and had this dream:
The Sakyong, Jamgon Mipham Rinpoche, who's the main teacher in Shambhala, was staying in our house. Even in the dream I thought of a story Diana Mukpo told us at the retreat - that she and Chogyam Trungpa (Mipham's father and former head of Shambhala) used to drop by their senior students' houses without warning for dinner, to see if they were uplifting their lives for everyone, including themselves, all the time. So here he was, in our house, currently without a bathroom sink, with tumbleweeds of cat hair and dust rolling around, and dirty dishes in the sink. I was mortified, but also so glad he was in my house. I went to a talk and saw him speak there, but then went home early and stayed up late cleaning. When he came back he seemed happy but said nothing about the difference in the house.

The important thing is that *I* felt it. When I told Dylan about the dream, about the stories of dropping in on their students, he looked mortified. "Too much work," he noted, and I tried to explain again - this isn't some outside standard, this is making your home as good as you want it to truly be as often as you can so that you can be your best - most alert, most rested, most supported. He got it, then. The Sakyong appeared in my dream not to bless me, not because I am special, but to remind me that I can be as prepared for myself, as honoring of myself, as for him. That I want to be. That there is no difference between me and him.

So I cleaned up my office today, put the shrine together with new supplies, and everything somehow found its place that had seemed homeless before. Putting together the books and texts from the retreat, a photo of the Sakyong fell out of my bag and landed face up on the floor. A slight smile, eyes directly looking at me, he reflected my own state - cleanliness is next to godliness, yes, but not some external god. Our own internal god, our own internal basic goodness, beyond good and bad, can land and open best in an uncluttered space.

The practice opened me up to this, I know that for certain. It, ironically, instead of taking me back to the retreat, brought me more here - into my home, into my life, into my "stuff" (of literal and metaphorical meaning). It's about time - as the retreat becomes more of a dream in my mind, a memory, the past, I don't want the teachings and their effect on me to fade. Last night was a reminder of how quickly it can all come back, and then some.

Here's to tasting just enough of the dream to sharpen up reality.