Day of Rest | Open Space Practice, (AKA: A Thousand Shades of Gray)

~This started as a wild write with my Friday morning sangha. The poem we were writing to is Maggie Nelson’s “Birthday Poem.”

I should write you all the time, tell you about this space inside me, like the hollow of a bell. I think we all have it, this space, this hollow inside. Most of us spend so much time thinking of it as a hole, a void, a wound. We think we need to fill it, to fix it. We treat it as a problem but what if it is exactly what it’s supposed to be: empty space? A portal, a passage, a path? What if healing has more to do with accepting, surrendering to the space, the unknown, the mystery? Maybe we should see it for what it is — empty, yes, but luminous.

My Buddhist name, the one I was given when I took my refuge vows, translates to “space dancer.” I was taught that this name is a tool for practice, that it holds the capacity to be both transparent, a clear description of something true, AND a riddle you spend your life attempting to unravel, like a Zen koan. And it’s been that way for me — it makes absolute sense that it would be my name AND remains a mystery. In terms of that space inside, like the hollow of a bell, it seems to be an instruction — dance with the space, in the space, ring the bell and others will hear it exactly because it is empty to begin with, you are empty and the way you move against it will make it sing.

On our morning walk, a red winged blackbird flew over my head as we made our way along the path next to the water. As it flew, it sang, and I wondered, again, how something so small can make such a big noise. Even during the effort of flight, it still could do it. Chickadees are similar, so tiny and skittish but also able to make such a big sound. What it must feel to sing like that, to have it fill you like breath, to feel the sound reverberate as your lungs empty, to feel it vibrate in the hollow of your throat as it goes.

And what it must feel like to fly, and as I say that I remember that some bird bones are hollow. I always guessed that was part of why they can fly, but when I look it up, these hollow places, this space inside like the hollow of a bell, actually helps them breathe. They are called “pneumatic bones” and they help birds to fly not because it makes them lighter but rather they need so much oxygen to fly that their lungs extend into some of their bones. The hollow and the breath allow the flight as well as the song.

This morning, as I listened to the music track I picked for meditation, which included the sounds of rain and wind and bamboo and a guitar, it made me think of the story about the musician who climbs to the top of a mountain to ask a teacher how to practice. The teacher, knowing the question is coming from a musician, uses an example he’ll understand, referencing the strings of his instrument, and gives the practice instruction that I’ve heard Pema Chödrön give: “not too loose, not too tight.” If the strings of your instrument are too loose, they won’t make a sound, and if they are too tight, they will break. Therefore, to practice, you must keep yourself not too loose and not too tight.

Then I thought about a guitar and how like the bell and the bird it can feel the music they make because of the hollow spot, the empty space. The guitar and the bell and the bird vibrate with the sound of their particular song, can feel it inside even as they let it go, literally hold space for it in their own emptiness, and that holding and eventual letting go, that hollow is what allows it to echo out as music. And in this way, through the holding and letting go, both the origin point of the song and where the music lands can feel it in that hollow space they each have inside.

It is the same when making any art, any offering that comes from a truth previously held hidden. The artist feels their voice, their truth like breath in the hollow space inside. If we instead try to fill that space, that hollow of the bell, with other things, thinking we must fill the emptiness, heal the wound, what actually happens is we are silenced, stuck, unable to sing or fly or even breathe. So the food, the phone, the drug, the new furniture or whatever we reach for to fill the void is in the end just junk, a heap, a pile, a hoard that doesn’t truly fill us up but rather traps us, turns us into a hungry ghost who can never be satisfied. We misunderstand so much about the emptiness, get so confused about the space inside us, like the hollow of a bell. Empty yes, but also luminous.

Rain continues to flood California, the long standing drought easing but the water coming way too fast. Elsewhere crocus or even daffodils are pushing out of the earth, seeking the light. Where I am, where some years at this time we get snow, even the occasional blizzard, it’s the arrival of the robins that bring the promise of another spring. There’s a flock of about 20 on our street, drawn by the crab apple trees and our compost pile and the rich soft dirt out front waiting to be planted after the threat of frost passes. I’ve always loved them more than other birds – something about their smoky head, back, wings, and tail; the ring of gold around their dark eyes; the pumpkin color of their breast and belly; their song.

They’ve always been a sign of spring. I was sad that they weren’t coming to my feeder, stuck to the window over my writing desk, but they are more wild in that way, eat both what’s been left behind and what is waking up, making their own way regardless of if we are here or not, fill the feeder with seed or not. We’ve had two nests of bright blue eggs in the 20 years we’ve lived in this house. It seems to always start with four, no more and no less. The first nest was in our backyard, in the narrow leaf cottonwood that’s no longer there, inadvertently protected from predators by the simple presence of our dogs. All four eggs went from hatching to flying out of the nest in just two weeks. I hadn’t realized that it all happened so fast and still remember the sweet way that my dogs Dexter and Sam quietly watched the final hatchling as it hopped around the yard, working up the courage to fly away from everything it had known thus far in its tiny brief life. babybird

The other nest was in the front yard, in our lilac bushes. A hail storm happened early on and we worried they’d be crushed, were so happy when the storm passed and they were all there, still intact and bright as ever. And yet, their nest was in a spot where the neighborhood cats could reach them, with no protection from the dogs. Only three of the eggs hatched, and as far as we could tell, no one was left to fly out of the nest at the end of those short two weeks. The nest remained there for a few years after, empty and waiting, until a wind storm blew it down and smashed it on the sidewalk below. This is how life is, isn’t it? The good news and the bad. The beautiful and the brutal, the tender and the terrible. We are here for it, for both, for all of it.

I don’t know what the outcome of my upcoming surgery will be. It’s technically “elective” and as my surgeon kept reminding me, “You don’t have to do this.” I can’t know for certain on this end of things if it’s the right thing to do, if it’s necessary, or if it will help, if anything will be different, better or worse because of it. That’s the worst part of big choices – they’ll have a big impact on your life but you never have all the information you need, can’t know all the various causes and conditions involved, so you make the choice partially blind. You step into something and it could be exactly where you wanted to land or it could be stepping into a wad of used chewing gum or a pile of dog shit. You have to pick without knowing exactly what it is you are agreeing to. It could turn out to be a disaster, a terrible mistake, but you can’t know until you make it. You hope it’s better than where you are, that it will be an improvement, but you won’t know until it’s over, and in this case, there’s no going back.

When I met with the surgeon, he was like a Zen monk – the smile, the calm, the equanimity, the wisdom and skill from decades of practice. I felt like a student who’d been giving a koan to solve (as in “what is the sound of one hand clapping?”), a riddle with no clear solution, and he was the teacher, there to witness but not give me the answer. I kept trying to trick him into telling me what to do, wishing he could promise me something, tell me it would all be okay, that I was doing the right thing. Instead he kept giving the decision back to me, placing the choice back in my lap, into my waiting open hands. I had to make the choice, even with all the “not knowing,” the doubt and unanswerable questions. I schedule and plan and prepare having no idea what the outcome will be.

In a scene from a movie I saw recently, a dad and daughter are talking, and the dad says, “Everything will be okay.” The daughter responds, “That’s bullshit, you can’t know that.” He goes on to explain that at some point the chaos settles, and it’s that state, that moment of being he’s referring to when he says things will be okay. I suppose you could also say “this too shall pass” or “everything is temporary” – so many things in life are like this, the good news and the bad news are really the same thing. The depth of the grief is equal in measure to how much you loved what you’ve lost; or when bad things happen, they pass and good things follow, or the other way around; or every relationship ends badly, even the best of them, because they will all end (because we all do, eventually), one way or another – the good news and the bad.

So many of the decisions we have to make are based on gut instinct, a feeling, a guess that we make without all the facts. We don’t know how things will work out. You can spend hours researching and reading all the reviews and recommendations but at some point you have to pull the trigger, take the leap, shit or get off the pot.

I feel like this dilemma, this contradiction, lucky and sad, tender and terrible, beautiful and brutal, is where I live, where we all live. In a liminal space while simultaneously at the center of things, the emptiness is luminous. It can be confusing or I can surrender to it and float. This experience of living doesn’t come with a map or a guide, or maybe it does. Maybe the answers are everywhere if you’d only look, open our eyes and listen. The birds singing at the feeder are giving you the answer. The river bubbling over the rocks is telling you everything you need to know. The way your dog sighs and stretches in the sun is the meaning of life. You try your hardest to make it more complicated but it’s enough, just like this, tart like a lime, sharp like teeth. Bite into it and you’ll see. You can have the fruit and what you don’t use goes into the compost pile. From there the squirrels and the mice will be fed, and the occasional snake might feed on the fat mice. What’s left will break down and in the spring, it will feed the garden and the garden will bear fruit that feeds you and the birds and the bees and all the rest, and the whole thing starts all over again.

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It’s like this, this is how it goes. You don’t have to try so hard. You can pray and sing or weep. You can walk out the front door and keep on walking until you reach the river. Promise me you’ll listen to what the owls have to tell you. Follow their call in the dark of morning until you see them high up in the trees and when the dog nudges your hand to remind you he’s there, thank the owls and the trees, the ground and your feet, and keep walking, remembering that of all the paths we could have taken, we’re briefly here and walking together. That’s the good news and the bad.