On Having a Good Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving 2011

I had a fine night's sleep, not that common when you're in your seventies, and awoke with a peaceful mind.  I'm going to a planned-potluck Thanksgiving dinner at the church, and have only one thing to cook.  Japanese sesame spinach from the Low-Fat Moosewood cookbook is served cold, so I won't have to dance in the flash mob in the kitchen to heat it up.

Into my empty mind came the remembrance of Thanksgivings past, in which I drove I-71 from Columbus to my parent's house on Greenlawn Avenue in Akron in the worst traffic of the year - bumper to bumper at 72 mph.  During that drive I would vow things like, "He's not going to get to me this time," and "I'm not going to get mad at anybody today."

In time my parents moved to a small apartment in a nearby town, and Cassie held the Annual Dysfunction, as someone later termed it, not in jest, then my father died and we all went to a horribly expensive restaurant.  Then I held it in my house.  Then my mother died.  Then my sister moved to Australia.  Then my brother finished his dying of liver cancer.   Things change.

Midstream we began the Thanksgiving dinner at the church.  It was something Tina came to - her family didn't like her, either - but she died last year.  I miss her acerbic presence in my life; she was irreplaceable.  Well, they all are.  We all are.

I didn't know much about vowing back then.  Nor was I in the habit of expressing my anger, irritation, resentment - just kept them on simmer.  Of course, that kind of vow is an evil virus that can take over all your feelings and put them in the deep freeze we call depression.

I've been teaching the Great Vows for all, and thinking how the second vow is a natural for this great family holiday in this country of rampant consumerism -

Greed, anger, and ignorance arise endlessly, vowing to cut off the mind road.

They do arise.  And the vow is not to stop them.  The vow is to let them pass, the way you do when you meditate.  The vow is to get off the long train of resentments, preferences, desires, by doing something else.  Cut off the mind road of long stories, hear the music, and enter the dance.

Kindness, Again

 [image:  what happened to a violet when I missed around with Photoshop]

a post from Laurie D., who has been working with a bad back -

I am trying to remember some real basic stuff, like don't sit in a chair that doesn't have support, no matter how cushy it is.  Like stopping to lie on the floor, or couch, when I need to.  And to do my ball and neck exercises, to sit properly (I just changed) and to move loosely. . . .  I really want my first commitment to be to healing me.

This struck me because I recently vowed to be kind to myself.  A vow is more than an intention or goal, is about my own behavior, and has a spiritual dimension - i.e., not about wanting a Prada handbag (which I don't, by the way).  Vows come to me unprompted during meditation or sitting in church. I tend to support them with a mudra (hand posture) of intention, for which I can't find an image right now.

It seems on the face of it that it takes much more effort to be attentive to my needs than it would have when I was 18, or 30, but second thought shows that's not true.  It's just that when I was young and had seemingly limitless energy I ignored my needs altogether, trained hard to go along - as my mother would say to me, angrily, Get with the program.  I don't remember a specific occasion - there were many, having to do, I think, with smile, laugh, drink, have a good time! It strikes me now that going along with the crowd is usually the wrong thing to do. Time and experience, and lovingkindness meditation, have developed my own innate tendency not to.

My mudra of intention is based on a yogic understanding of energy.  I like mudras, though I have come out of my transplant remembering almost none. Zen students meditate using both body and hand mudras intended to invite enlightenment. They certainly enforce concentration, there's that. Here is a fascinating article about all things postural, including the Zen mudra.