not native fruit

daoist wisdom of the ordinary

Here is something I really liked from "Daoist texts with commentary by Thomas Cleary" (with my own comments in [ ] brackets). 

“Ordinary expressions and common sayings accord with the path of sages; you should turn to them for careful research.  If you use everyday activities to search in reverse, everything in the world turns to jewels.” [This reminds me of how I felt about the Book of Proverbs when I was 21-22.]

“The Tao is not far from people;  what people consider the Tao is far from people.  [This was true in Catholicism too.  People thought the mystics were so extraordinary that there was no way on earth we could have any of their experiences.  We grew up with that bias and discouragement.]  The Tao is essence and life is the eternal Tao, the eternal Tao is the Tao of daily life; it’s just that while people use it daily they do not know it.

“If you carefully investigate the principles, you do not need to read a thousand classics and ten thousand texts; there are great revelations of the celestial mechanism right in ordinary expressions and common sayings.  For example, good people are called really genuine, truthful, conscientious, reasonable, respectable, aware of proper proportion, aware of when to go forward and when to withdraw, circumspect, perceptive, having their feet on the ground; bad people are said to be inhuman, lacking conscience, and unreasonable – they hurt others to benefit themselves, are self-deceived, violate nature and reason, take suffering for pleasure, take the false for the real, pick up one thing and forget another, without knowing death and life, without knowing good and bad, only knowing one and not two, only aware of the existence of themselves and not that of others.”  (p. 156, The Taoist Classics, Volume Two, from ‘Understanding Reality.’)

darkness

darkness,
at the hub of things,
don't let me forget you.
darkness,
womb of every thought,
don't let me shut you out
with light.
silence,
in the darkness,
our true home,
welcome me,
comfort me,
center me
in all that we are.

*    *    *

i'd like to say a brief word in prose here about darkness.  a spiritual-minded acquaintance of mine once said that my love of 'darkness' scared her.  her spiritual tradition favored light.  it seems to me now that some spiritual traditions demonize the darkness.  therefore people might get the totally wrong idea that i am somehow singing the praises of evil-doing, which is far from the case.  i do believe that our misapprehension of darkness might be at the root of more evil-doing than we care to admit, since so much of that is done in the shining, blinding light of day, in the shimmer of success, wealth and glory.  we often can't make peace with the darkness and the silence, and seek something else.  but then there's all kinds of wrongness and some of it is darkness-bred, too.  but evil-doing is not partial to either darkness or light, it makes use of both and itself operates on another principle altogether.

some of my happiest memories have to do with darkness.  the darkness of the ocean at night.  driving along the old two-lane road that skirted the beach in south jersey, with the sparse colored lights in the distance, before and behind, of tiny resort towns with their small modest boardwalk piers.  the only sound was the soft soughing of the waves, and the tiny distant lights were white, yellow, occasionally red, green or blue, trailing out into the sea. well, it was another time and place.

the darkness of my childhood garden at night, lit by stars and fireflies, ringed by the black canyon of our brick two- and three-story houses.

now, the darkness resting on the trees outside my bedroom window, their leaves lit only by the moon.

one of the things i particularly have loved about my spiritual beacon, Amma, is that while she can radiate intense decibels of light, she also has a profound darkness about her.  her skin and hair are dark, true, that's part of it.  she is mysterious and unknowable, that's another part of it.  but perhaps especially, for me, it is that her story has so much darkness in it.  she grew up along the seashore in south india, in a place without electricity until perhaps the late nineteen-seventies, and then very little of it. there was the poverty and 'ignorance' of the fishing-folk she grew up among. the 'darkness' of living in a remote, primitive, unknown little place in a swamp.  yet she grew and developed her intensely compassionate and wise spirituality in that desolate marginalized place.

for so many years, she sang devotional songs at night in the family shrine-room, and still to this day, she walks along the seashore there at night singing her spiritual songs.  the workshop of her spiritual life was the darkness of the night and of the vast and unknowable sea. 

when i visited amritapuri during its early days, i too had the chance to experience the qualities of her home-place, and i am sure that this helped me to evolve in terms of my own relationship with darkness.  but that's much more than i can write here, today.

paula gunn allen

I”ve just discovered – or re-discovered – the feminist author, Paula Gunn Allen, who is widely credited with inventing the field of Native American Literary Studies, but who viewed herself as a multi-diverse person, with recent ancestry of  Laguna Pueblo, Lakota Sioux, Scots and Lebanese.  Sounds like my family.  And yes, I do relate to a great deal of what she has to say.

I think it’s interesting that she approaches the Native American literary tradition (oral in its origins) from a mixed-ethnic perspective.  In so many ways, I think this makes it easier to be a bridge-builder, a peace-maker, and we still need people who can do that, even in this age of Diversity with a capital D.  Thank goodness for the blends (who acknowledge they are blends - in realtiy, we are all blends, of course).

I started with her book on Pochahontas, which may be her most recent one.  She starts off by saying that we can’t just look at the facts if we want to know Pochahontas, because for one thing, there simply aren’t that many.  Rather, “a biography of Pocahontas must tell her life in terms of the myths, the spirits, the supernaturals, and the worldview that informed her actions and character.”  (p.2)  We don’t look at her as somehow standing above others, whether in terms of achievement or in terms of victimhood, because that would separate her from the “entire life system: that community of living things, geography, climate, spirit people, and supernaturals – (because) what is (to be) emphasized is the interactive nature of that person’s life.”  (p.2) 

For me, all of this makes perfect sense, because that is most certainly how I understand my own life.  Of course, as I get older, I want to understand my life even more than before, and I do understand it more than ever.  I’m interested in Pocahontas because she is a First Contact Native American, and member of a tribe that was closely related to my own native ancestors through my mother’s paternal grandmother, and possibly maternal grandmother as well.  I’m interested in that period of contact, and especially in that part of the east-coast’s First Contact story, which differed so much from either New England’s or the territories south of Virginia.

Here is something Paula Gunn Allen wrote that I particularly like: “A life comprises all the currents that flow through it and that it flows through.  Nor is it ever finished.  A person, like life itself, has neither beginning nor end.  It just is, here and there, self and other, present and absent.  In that way, Pocahontas’s life continues on, as the books, poetry, songs, dramas, and films centering on her prove.”  (p.2)

I really feel this way about my great-grandmother who seems to have been quite a powerful person – in my eyes, her life is continuing on, and she has some kind of unusual power to let others know about herself and who she is (was).  I seem to be the chief vessel for that transmission, but some people get a direct transmission from her photo.  She was a ‘Moor Indian’ from Delaware, who lived most of her adult life in the Pennsylvania mountains and the end of her life in Philadelphia.  I’m trying to get something published about her, but if that doesn’t work, I will have a whole page available about her on-line soon.

Anyway, I’m sorry to have to report that Paula Gunn Allen, a voice for many, has passed on from this plane of existence – last year, in May of 2008 – but she certainly is a living being in my consciousness.  I hope to continue to pass on to you what are, for me, thought-provoking passages from her work, as I discover them.

vanity

Vanity is supposed to be one of the characteristics of the Fire Rabbit.  From the Judeo-Christian point of view, this sounds terrible, because Vanity is one of the (evil) passions.  Perhaps this is one of the pitfalls of mixing yr metaphors, and trying to talk about Chinese Astrology and Christian Moral Theology in the same breath.  But wait a minute!  Doesn’t vanity serve a purpose?  Is all vanity harmful to others?  In one of the Christian traditions, the problem is not so much ‘the passions’ but the excess of passion that is the problem.  In that case, an excessive display of vanity might be harmful to others and even to the person all caught up in vanity.  But a certain healthy dose of vanity can be a protection, too.  Sidney Poitier seems to feel it served that purpose in his own life, and it brought him to a better place.  He needed a little ‘vanity’ in order to keep believing in himself when times were tough.  I think we all need to trust the process a little more.  One thing can transform into something else.  It doesn’t mean that the ancient ethical wisdom found, for example, in the Judeo-Christian tradition, can’t act as a guideline, but getting all excessive about it just doesn’t do.  It seems to me that moral rectitude can turn into one of those trouble-making ‘passions’ too.

panchakarma

i just finished my annual panchakarma cleanse. Panchakarma means 'five cleansing actions.'  it's a rejuvenating and healing process from the ayurvedic tradition of Inida, involving diet, herbs, purgatives, sweating, lymphatic-style massage, sinus cleansing, and more, administered over a time span of about a month.   i've lost ten pounds or more, plus i've lost toxins galore.  I feel great!  Let me tell you, it isn't exactly easy to do, but with persistence it gets easier every time, and has helped me to make some necessary changes in my regulator diet and lifestyle.  my practitioner has a fantastic line of products - without exaggeration the best herbal products I have ever used - Sarada's Ayurvedic Remedies.  Here is her website.

Just before I began the cleanse, I had the flu, so it's been about a month of being caught up in the process of working with my physical health.  I've been making daoist perfumes to handle the spiritual side of things.  They are also very effective, not to mention extremely pleasant.  I learned this technique from my daoist medicine teacher, Jeffrey Yuen, of the Jade Purity School. 

Pica, Lori, Carrie, Peter, Dave, Yemi, Dick, Beth and other supporters of my site, if you think you'd like a personalized daoist perfume (for free of course) please email me.

sephardic tolerance

i've been writing so much about my mother and her family and very little about my father.  well, until recently, i thought i knew all there was to know about my father's family.  but now there's been yet another major familial wake-up call.  my father's family were 'danish jews.'  I put scare-marks around those words, because technically they were lutherans, however, not really.

let me try to explain.  my father told me, when i was quite young, that 'my family are the ones they call the portugese.'  as for most americans, that meant nothing to me.  at age 8, i replied to him, 'you mean you like people from portugal?'  we just looked at each other for a few minutes, aware that we were not really communicating.  but can you imagine that i remember this moment?  i think partly because i'd never seen my dad so agitated.  we had been in a roomful of men who were shouting and laughing and carrying on, and my dad suddenly took me outside and said, 'karen, there's something i really want you to understand about me.  i know you're a little young, but i want you to know that my people are the ones they call the portugese.'

okay, fast forward 50 years, and i'm reading on-line at jewishgenweb that the Danish Jews were called 'the Portugese.' 

Various other memories surface: 'our family wore yellow stars even though we didn't 'have' to' during the Nazi occupation of Denmark.  My father pointing to a picture of the Rothschilds' mansion in Denmark, saying 'they are one of our best families in Denmark.'  My mother insisted on naming me Katherine, and when my Dad pronounced it 'katrin' she changed it to Karen, assuming that it is a Danish name so it would be more suitable, etc.  He told me 'Karen is not one of our names.  Anna and Lilian, names like that are ours.'  There was all of this 'ours' and 'theirs' - not in any kind of passionate way, just quietly, matter-of-fact. 

His account of 'going to (the Lutheran) church' was that 'we' only went for things like 'the naming ceremony about a week after the baby is born,' weddings, funerals and at around age 14, 'when the boy becomes a man, we have a ceremony and the boy is given the scripture.'  He told me, 'they call it confirmation, but really it's just coming of age.'  'The scripture' was the Psalms only.  After that ceremony, my father went to sea, and began the career that would last for the rest of his life. 

Well, well.  Some of my American Jewish friends are very excited about this story, others tell me that he wasn't in any way, shape or form a Jew.  He had chosen to be 'nothing' because he wasn't really a Christian either.  But he always made it clear to me that he wasn't 'against' the Christian faith.  And, when you think about it, after all, Jesus was a Jew, so perhaps that helped at least a little when Jewish family took up a modified form of being Christian.  This kind of 'adopted' Christianity has been going on among the Sephardim since the 1300's at least. 

Apparently, from what I can glean, King Christian IV invited Sephardic Jews from Germany and the Netherlands to come to Denmark to help him modernize the country, especially in the shift to a money-based economy.  I guess it was probably fish-based before that (lol). Anyway, all of that was okay.  They also allowed a smaller number of Ashkenazi Jews to enter, especially in the area of Copenhagen.  The Sephardic population was found scattered throughout the rural districts, such as Ribe Amt where my father's families are from.  Well, in the early 1800's, social pressure was placed on these Sephardic families to convert to Lutheranism in the interest of a more uniform society (sounds like the wishes of Castilian Spain, but without the blood-purity cant.)  Most Danish Jews converted at that time.  The rest moved to either Copenhagen, or to Aalborg where there was a synogogue in Jutland. 

Well!  I have finally come across an article that talks about the high level of tolerance exhibited by the Sephardic Jews, their willingness to blend with their surrounding cultures through intermarriage, adoption of religious tenets, etc, in contra-distinction to Ashkenazi Jews who favored separation and a more highly defined identity. Not only that, but I recognize my dear father in these few pages.  He taught me always to respect the religions of others, because whatever I might think of the religion, it was very very important to the people who believed in it.  That was one of the most important, personal, private, highly-charged things my father ever said to me on one of our wonderful walks together.

Anyway, here's the link to the article on The Special Character of Sephardi Tolerance.

yoga in the morning

I'm back to doing my yoga in the morning instead of the evening, and I find it is a great way to the start the day.  All that deep breathing!  I also go outside in the back yard and do some belly-breathing (bhastrika) and some morning chanting.  I love being outside in the fresh air with the birds singing and twittering and flitting from tree to tree.  This morning there was quite a bit of fresh deer scat on the ground.  And this in the middle of the city!  My husband has been setting out a heavy container of water, because everything is so dry here, we are sure the wild animals need it. They seem rather desperate lately.

Anyway, I find that the yoga really does stretch out my joints just a little, just enough to improve the flow of synovial fluid, and keep them well lubricated and protected.  Yoga definitely benefits my lymph system, which needs a lot of help.  How do I know that?  I know that because when I don't move around much - for example, on long plane trips or car trips, my ankles and sometimes even my legs swell.  Also, the more I don't move, the more tired I get - so that means the circulation is not moving well, which means the lymph is not moving.  We have to get the lymph moving in order to cleanse our systems, since the lymph fluid is full of the excretions of our cells.  We really need to be more aware that every cell in our bodies is like a little animal in itself - it eats, it metabolizes and it s--ts and we want to get the s--t (aka toxins) out of our bodies!

Another thing I really enjoy about my morning yoga is how much it makes real to me that statement from the Bible, 'the body is the temple of the Spirit.'  I actually experience that when I do yoga.  In a certain way, I never feel more present to myself.  It definitely opens the gateway to prayer as well.  My mind and heart are so ready for some deep prayer after yoga.  I've cultivated the habit of 'prayer always' since my youth, but I mean that kind of 'here I am, Lord, I am listening' kind of time.

I love blending spiritual traditions, and I will be writing more on that soon.  I've gained so much goodness from the various spiritual traditions I've explored, and I've been able to avoid the political pitfalls of religion by not buying into them at that level.  Religions are essentially civil institutions, strangely enough - they primarily function to support social identity, and also, but secondarily, to provide comfort.  When I was a semi-professional religious person I was particularly interested in the latter function and never at all interested in the former, which seems only to get us all into trouble.  *smile*

moorish gardens

I've been thinking about my years as a Catholic, and realizing that the things I probably appreciated most about that tradition were three: one, all the beautiful places for contemplation that I experienced as a Catholic.  Beautiful gardens, alcoves, chapels, fountains, grottoes.  The odd thing is that these were probably traditionally derived from Islamic spirituality.  In the Middle Ages, Christianity was deeply impressed and influenced by Moorish culture and spirituality.  The Moors were much admired and imitated and studied by the medieval christians, and a great deal of their culture was absorbed.

I think we could all be more aware of the fact that religions are not and have never been hermetically sealed vessels.  There has always been a lot of sharing and blending among religious traditions within a cultural context.  Divisions and factions have been fomented for political reasons by individuals and groups of people who stood to gain, and warfare has been carried out for generations afterward by people who stood to gain very little.  It's really a trick of the mind that leads us to think there are 'different religions.'  I've just been reading a book about early Scotland that remarks on a portrait of a Scottish Bishop who is 'flanked by a crescent moon and a six-pointed start.  Our interpretation is that all three faiths - Christian, Jewish, Muslim - were tolerated and practiced in the diocese of St. Andrew's.'  So this phenomenon was hardly unique to medieval Spain, and according to travelers I have met, still exists in Eastern Europe.

When I studied theology in the nineteen-eighties, one of the main points they wanted to bring home to us is that Christianity emerged from a large pan-Mediterranean gnostic culture, in which many different 'religions' flourished, all sharing a basic gnostic orientation.  The history, development and interrelationship of the 'Big Three' - Christianity, Judaism and Islam - is very interesting, not from the political and land-grab perspective, but in terms of human spiritual evolution.

The second thing I appreciated about my time in Catholicism are some of the wonderful people I met who had such an optimistic, positive orientation.  Obviously, not everyone shared this, but I'm focusing on those who really brightened my day, and brightened the world for me, for that matter.  It is possible to find a very positive orientation in Catholicism, but it can sometimes verge on the 'pollyanna' side, and I guess I found at some point that it was not adequate for me.  This may also be because it was not really thriving as a living spiritual tradition in my locale.  Or if it was, I didn't have access to it.

Lastly, I appreciated the ritual aspects of the worship at the time I was involved there.  I no longer feel moved by that particular ritual and have found another I find more nourishing to my soul and spirit at the present time.  But I realize that in the Western world, there is rather a dearth of that kind of ceremonial ritual which is so richly patterned deep within the human soul, so what little we still have has to be acknowledged and appreciated.

grackle

When I was in my mid-thirties and realizing after eight years of trying to conceive a child, visiting doctors, adoption agencies, etc, that my husband and I were not going to have children after all, I was very depressed and confused.  I also discovered that I had a terrible physical condition that caused a lot of hormonal imbalance, crying, fatigue, menstrual disorders, and probably contributed to my infertility.  I don’t want to go into the gory details too much, but suffice it to say, I was quite miserable, and extremely disappointed.  Somehow, in my confused little brain, I had had it all figured out that by marrying and having children and providing them with a good home, I would be making up for certain things that had been lacking in my own early life.  And I would be helping to make the world a better place.

During this period in my mid-thirties, I began to realize that these expectations and fantasies about the life I was going to create were actually contributing to my disease.  I grieved the loss of my dreams (and many other losses that piggy-backed onto it) and began to gird up my loins, and make a firm and clear intention to change the way I saw my life, to change my expectations, to try to find a new way of seeing myself and my life.  To heal myself and begin again.

Everywhere I went during this period, I would constantly see a solitary grackle.  I must have seen grackles before, but never really noticed them or thought they were quite ordinary birds, perhaps because they are a simple blackbird in general lineament.  But upon closer observation, I noticed that they had lovely rainbow colors around their necks, a subtle iridescence within their black feathering, and a most startling, sparkling, vivid amber eye.  They made me think of a poem I'd read that included some phrase like, 'to pierce the sour rind' (of life).  I could taste that when I looked at the grackle.  Making the rounds of various parking-lots in my empty circle of household duties, I would spot a grackle again and again.  I began to think of grackles as a kind of ‘totem’ bird in my life. 

month of rabbit and 'awakening insects'

I love the name of the chinese half-month that begins today: month of awakening insects.  I have a Chinese therapeutic-music CD entitled 'Awakening Insects' and it is the most vibrant, energizing yet somehow ethereal piece of music I've ever heard.  Really, quite unlike anything else, and yet it vividly brings to mind those moments in nature when a chorus of insect-singing begins.

Of course, the awakening of the insects represents the return of life after winter's sleep.  The preceding half-month is called 'Spring Rains.'  What follows the Spring Rains?  The up-burgeoning of life!  But the return of life is still in its early stages.  Yang 'gains influence' as Yin begins to decline. 'Cold' has become 'cool,' with occasional slightly warm days.

This is the month associated with the Earthly Branch known as 'Rabbit.'  "The Rabbit is linked to the colour green, which is associated with the season of spring.  It is the colour of new life, tranquillity and relaxation.  It is said that dreams will end well if they feature the colour green since it is a lucky and influential colour."  (p. 19, Chinese Astrology, by Man-Ho Kwok - this is the one book to get if you are at all interested in investigating Chinese nature-wisdom.  I wouldn't call it 'astrology' since it has virtually nothing to do with the stars.  Unlike western astrology, this system really relies on seasons and time of day, basically with placement in space and time.  They do use a few fixed stars in one branch of the system.  Rather than 'Astrology' the 'Four Pillars' is more like a sort of 'Feng Shui' of the person.  I will be posting on Four Pillars soon.)

Anyway, interesting that we also celebrate the Rabbit at this time of year, here in the West, right?  And that we chose 'green' as the color of our money.

I've introduced a new category with this post: dao and chinese.  As some of you may know I have been an acupuncturist for the past 19 years, and a student of daoism.  I've scaled back my healing work in the past two years and have been doing less demanding work as a personal assistant/elder companion, which harks back to my earlier life.  I guess I must be a born caregiver, can't seem to get away from it.  But I am definitely pulled by this daoist system of healing and would like to do more with it in some way, shape or form.  So, one step in that direction may be to begin sharing this part of myself on this blog.