Categories
Healthy Living

In need of healing at so many levels…

Latest local Silicon Valley news – told to me by a lovely mom who came to my yoga class last night (her first yoga class ever – SO proud of her! Thank you as I know for many moms, Sunday evenings are hard to leave home that time – sacrificing Family Sunday dinner- thank you again for coming). She tells me after our class that there was a suicide at Gunn High School last week – I have no details but know that Gunn High School is in a relatively affluent community proving that all communities need Sonima Foundation.

Here’s a heart-wrenching plea from one of the students. Parents and teachers – maybe cultivating some empathy would aide in the healing of what’s broken. Give 16-year olds space. Let them be normal high school students enjoying what it means to be “Sweet” 16. And I don’t think I am naive to think that a program from Sonima Foundation would have helped had these vulnerable, sensitive students had a well designed and delivered Health & Wellness education before the 3-7 AP classes they are driven to take and the accompanying sleep deprivation. Which is more important? Straight A’s OR Happy, Healthy and Caring young people who will be our future? Do we want honest, creative, out-of-the box thinking, kind and compassionate people to shape our future or do we want dreadfully competitive, high-achieving, always seeking recognition and dominance, exclusive minded, highly driven “robots” attempting to problem solve and create a better, more peaceful future ?

We don’t know the background enough to blame the high-pressure, high-achievement oriented culture of some schools. Perhaps it was something else BUT if it is the case as this student in the video says, due to the culture of “pressure-cooker” academics spawn by the parental demands – to which she bravely says “CALM DOWN”! I wondered what fuels the parents to demand so much out of their child ? Of course parents want the best for their child – is that what fuels them to set high expectations?

It’s fear. The anxieties – and the kids like osmosis feel it under their skin. They don’t feel all the beautiful things under their skin – they just feel the fear, the anxiety, the stress. As well meaning with all good intentions, fear can “motivate” but …it can also be so toxic. If we change that “fear” that enslaves them to achieve at any cost, to something positive, like “faith” “acceptance” and “love” for life and people – to what’s really important, then the child is going to come out all right. Maybe it’s the parents who need the Health & Wellness program as much as their kids, so that they can give their kids the gift of space and fresh air to grow and develop at their own pace, self-regulation and self-acceptance that relies little from external validation (such as grades, popularity, praises…). I really like the values taught at the local elementary school – to do the right thing even when no-one is looking. To do good even if there’s no recognition. Hope that carries all the way to adulthood.

Here I re-post this as I feel it in my heart:

An Empath found in Rumi…

rosethorns

I will soothe you and heal you.
I will bring you roses.
I too have been covered with thorns.

– Rumi

Categories
Beautiful People

Teachers, the Elders …

Every-movement

If you are looking for inspirations – here it is… Little nuggets of words from the wise to bring about more awareness – for this life you live. Words are gems – Finding words to be more of a pick-me-up than any cup of caffeine … for the classroom, for your laptop, for family, friends and students … little reminders to get out of the auto-pilot living.

Thich Nhat Hanh … I love him. His grace, his words, his actions … his teachings. Children and adults, all can gain so much from his teachings. When we learn to live with mindfulness, we can truly engage in life and take in all this Universe has to offer – In fact, you are that Universe – mind and body, at the cellular level, deep down to every pore of your skin.

“Our greatest fear is that when we die we will become nothing. Many of us believe that our entire existence is only a life span beginning the moment we are born or conceived and ending the moment we die. We believe that we are born from nothing and when we die we become nothing. And so we are filled with fear of annihilation.

The Buddha has a very different understanding of our existence. It is the understanding that birth and death are notions. They are not real. The fact that we think they are true makes a powerful illusion that causes our suffering. The Buddha taught that there is no birth; there is no death; there is no coming; there is no going; there is no same; there is no different; there is no permanent self; there is no annihilation. We only think there is.

When we understand that we cannot be destroyed, we are liberated from fear. It is a great relief.
We can enjoy life and appreciate it in a new way.

Thich… we understand what you are saying in the above quote but can’t help the feeling of annihilation should you leave your body – the feeling of impending parting, the farewell, it’s the clinging we do faced with the “final” sayonara, adios, au revoir, good bye. Are you saying there’s no finality to death? It’s just a bad dream? Is clinging foolish and bad? But we just don’t want you to die. I know you think “88” is an auspicious number and all – we still need you here – I really learned so much from your question and answer sessions. Is this some kind of test to see if we really get it? I would like to learn more from you. Praying you are on the mend, healing so you can live on.

Please live and heal. Sending you love and healing prayers tonight. Day and Night. This reminds me of the time when I lost my father … even though in the end he expressed his wishes to die and end the suffering – how do we honor such a request. We want to cling on and do everything to intervene so that the ultimate departure not take place. Yet everyone has the right to live and die with dignity.

Stripped of dignity, life is not worth living – but as my mother would say, it’s not up to us to decide the time – but by the same divine powers, the miracle that graced this world with you in the first place. The same miracle that brings you here is the same miracle that takes you away … we do not determine and control our fate … and that’s why it’s a … miracle. Miracles at the beginning and the end (and hopefully many in-between should we live in awareness) to be celebrated.

Categories
Beautiful People

“No Death, No Fear”

sunflower

Thich Nhat Hahn is hospitalized. WHAaaa
***********************

After the passing of two Suzukis who transmitted Buddhism in the West, and having studied their publications, I had not encountered anyone as lucid as Thich Nhat Hahn since the Suzukis (I am sure there are many but I just don’t know them – suggest if you know anyone who has touched your heart with his/her teachings … love to read up) … His teachings on mindfulness, compassion and courage has touched us all.

I tend to cry easily these days but this is too much – to lose another great man – NOOOOoooooo ~ tears, tears, tears… we can’t lose this wise teacher; he needs to come out of it (apparently brain hemorrhage} as I cling to the idea of him living, never passing away, living forever or … at least as long as I live.

Then I came upon this…

“The day my mother died I wrote in my journal, “A serious misfortune of my life has arrived.” I suffered for more than one year after the passing away of my mother. But one night, in the highlands of Vietnam, I was sleeping in the hut in my hermitage. I dreamed of my mother. I saw myself sitting with her, and we were having a wonderful talk. She looked young and beautiful, her hair flowing down. It was so pleasant to sit there and talk to her as if she had never died. When I woke up it was about two in the morning, and I felt very strongly that I had never lost my mother. The impression that my mother was still with me was very clear. I understood then that the idea of having lost my mother was just an idea. It was obvious in that moment that my mother is always alive in me.

I opened the door and went outside. The entire hillside was bathed in moonlight.
It was a hill covered with tea plants, and my hut was set behind the temple halfway up.
Walking slowly in the moonlight through the rows of tea plants, I noticed my mother was still with me.

She was the moonlight caressing me as she had done so often, very tender, very sweet… wonderful!

Each time my feet touched the earth I knew my mother was there with me.
I knew this body was not mine but a living continuation of my mother and my father and my grandparents and great-grandparents. Of all my ancestors. Those feet that I saw as “my” feet were actually “our” feet. Together my mother and I were leaving footprints in the damp soil.

From that moment on, the idea that I had lost my mother no longer existed. All I had to do was look at the palm of my hand, feel the breeze on my face or the earth under my feet to remember that my mother is always with me, available at any time.”

― Thích Nhất Hạnh, No Death, No Fear

“This body is not me; I am not caught in this body, I am life without boundaries, I have never been born and I have never died. Over there the wide ocean and the sky with many galaxies All manifests from the basis of consciousness. Since beginningless time I have always been free. Birth and death are only a door through which we go in and out. Birth and death are only a game of hide-and-seek. So smile to me and take my hand and wave good-bye. Tomorrow we shall meet again or even before. We shall always be meeting again at the true source, Always meeting again on the myriad paths of life.”

― Thích Nhất Hạnh, No Death, No Fear

It’s true… I confess. as much as I love kids and peers, I love being around older people … I notice that some people, especially Westerners shun seniors or avoid older people and seem to think that you have to be wrinkle free and young to be beautiful but I think …as with children, they are the truly beautiful people, wrinkled and grey haired and all …I find them to be very precious and dear. Each line, each wrinkle like a fold in origami or a crevice in rocks that weathered the winds … adds character and a multi-faceted story. The fact that they lived to be old in itself needs to be cherished and celebrated – they are survivors – they are the long distance marathoners, plodding along – they are the steady turtles in a race with rabbits – they are the link to our past, the tribal elders to be respected and honored. So whenever I am in contact with anyone older, I really treat that time to be special because I always worry if our meeting will be the last.

And that feeling of the NOW is probably the way we should approach everything – everyday, every single encounter… out of 7 billion world population, in our lifetime, maybe we meet (just in passing) 10,000; much much fewer if measured on a more meaningful scale, probably 500 or so (forget teens’ FB friends in the thousands – might as well have been a person met in passing). Each single encounter is rather amazing when reviewed in such relative terms. It’s that saying – God brought us here, at this moment – here and now. The fact that we’ve even met, given the probability of unlikeliness … amazing. We may never meet again or we may again and again. It’s 500 out of 7,000,000,000+ chance, we’ve met. Put into perspectives, it’s amazing that we even met.

Not in a funny romantic way – whenever I see an older gentleman I find them endearing. Older ladies, I want to learn from and find something in common. I just think of all the people who were older than me, who had been kind to me and feel this tenderness. I could never repay them but … I will always honor and respect the older generation. They are the ones to show you the light when you are in darkness. They are the ones with wisdom only time and experience can give you. I still remember the time when I was turning 30 ( I know )and feeling depressed for getting so OLD and not achieving my goals and successes and my grandmother and her friends all laughed and said, You are just a baby! A whole life is ahead of you ! ha ha ha. So…yes, looking back, I hadn’t even began to “really” live. Someday it will be my turn to be that older one (hope so!) to be of service to the younger generation – hope I will live to be able to be that – not a burden but to be of service to others even in a very small modest way.