In early October, I was in planning mode for a one-month retreat at Plum Village to soak up the teachings and energies of the annual Rains Retreat (see last years post on this here), when I started feeling discouraged about the divisiveness in the U.S. and fearful about the upcoming presidential election between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. Over the weeks leading up to my departure, my heart let me know that I needed to get involved in the election in a more serious way before I left. 

I had not gone door to door since working on my Dad’s county commissioner campaign in 1981. My parents were both political activists and their care for the community and belief in the democratic process gave me the courage to get involved. I knew that my home state of Michigan and in fact my home county, Macomb, was what they call a “battleground” area because it was a county that could decide the election for Michigan and Michigan was one of the states that could decide the election for the whole country. 

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Dear friends,

In two weeks, I am heading to Plum Village in France for a month-long meditation retreat. I know I have a lot of privilege to be able to take a month to practice deeply with my community. For that, I am very grateful.

Recently, a friend of mine reached out to see if I could help her with a direct action for social justice, taking place during the time of my retreat. She made a very compelling argument about these unique times that we are in and how important it is to do what we can to end genocide and destruction.

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Dear Friends,

This week I would like to share some tips for using mindfulness to help you if you’re having difficulty with your sleep. I’ve also shared some of this in a recent video. Many people have told me about their difficulties sleeping, and I have also had periods of time when sleep was more elusive as well.

I think of the challenges of sleep in four main categories: 

1. Can’t sleep because I’m ruminating on past situations, conversations or actions

2. Can’t sleep because I’m dreading something happening the next day or in the future

3. Can’t sleep because my system is revved up and I can’t settle down

4. Can’t sleep because of medications or hormonal changes or pain

For the first two situations, I use my mindfulness practice to notice what thoughts are plaguing me the most. If it’s something that happened in the past, I ask myself the question: Can I do anything about this right now? If there is something small I can do, maybe send an apology email or make a note about something I want to do the next day, I do that.

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Dear friends,

Over the years, I have sometimes found myself believing that I need a particular person or thing to make myself feel whole. This feeling is best captured by the expression (coined by Renee Zellweger’s to Tom Cruise in the film Jerry McGuire): “You complete me.”  

As I’ve started learning about attachment theory, I see how this feeling stems from the anxiety of being cut off from the truth of my innate wholeness and connection to the cosmos. Understanding all the ways that human beings try to cope with our existential fears of separation helps me better understand and accept my own anxious thinking, which allows more space for transformation. (Some interesting videos on attachment and relationships here.)

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During a meditation recently, I was following my inhale in my exhale. Many upsetting thoughts were swirling in my head, mostly worries and fears about the current political situation and warming temperatures, sadness about my beloved estranged child, fear about potential cancer recurrence, and other random scary thoughts. 

The basic practice of samatha (stopping) is learning to come back to the breath and the body, noticing when our minds get spinning and finding our way back over and over again to this moment. Thich Nhat Hanh’s poem Froglessness describes this practice beautifully:

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Dear Friends,

A big part of my mindfulness practice is taking care of my strong emotions. This practice, which I learned from Thich Nhat Hanh, has been integral to healing a lot of my internal and external (usually interrelated) struggles. Thich Nhat Hanh’s basic teaching on strong emotions is that we embrace them with our mindfulness, the kind of mindfulness that is filled with friendliness, compassion, joy, and is welcoming of all. 

I have found that personal growth always begins with this process of welcoming bodily sensations, feelings and habitual thought patterns. When I’m able to practice with what arises, eventually there is much less grappling and much more ease and joy. 

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Dear Friends,

This past Sunday several local meditation communities came together for a silent sign-free meditative Peace Walk. The temperature here in DC was near 100 degrees as we walked along the National Mall to the U.S. Capitol grounds. Several medics were with us and helped to keep us all safe and well.

We manifested this walk to express our desire for peace throughout the world and to call on world leaders to step up to peacemaking for the benefit of all. Our intention was to show that we can act with peace, for peace. To show ourselves and whoever else showed up that there are small acts that can be done with great love. 

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Dear Friends,

I have been practicing with a situation that arose in 2022, when an old and dear friend of mine acted in a way that contributed to serious harm to my family. Since that moment, I have been trying my best to both respect the pain that I feel and not make her an enemy in my heart or mind. And this has been extremely challenging. 

One of my favorite songs/poems of Thich Nhat Hanh is called Alone Again, and the lyrics are (emphasis mine):

alone again I’ll go on
with bent head, but knowing
the immortality of love
and on the long rough road
both sun and moon will shine

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Dear Friends,

I hope you are well. 

Foremost in my mind and heart lately has been the question of how to support peace in our world so full of war. Thich Nhat Hanh was a strong proponent for peace during the Vietnam war and throughout his life. His message, as I understood it, was to work on creating peace in ourselves alongside the creation of the conditions needed for peace in the world. Both are necessary and they are interrelated.

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Dear Friends,

I hope you are enjoying life wherever you are today.

I wanted to share about a practice I am working with these days. It’s something I have heard Sister Peace talk about in the past, and again in a recent talk given at the BIPOC retreat at Deer Park Monastery.

This practice she calls Eye Hugging.

I think you can imagine what this means, but here is how Sister Peace describes it:

I call it the practice of Eye Hugging. And I look in your eye and I smile and you smile and you look in the eye of maybe someone next to you and you smile and you embrace.

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Dear Friends,

I hope that you are managing to live with some ease.

I wanted to share about a practice - using the word AND to include all aspects of a situation - that has come up for me in a few places lately.

At a recent retreat at Blue Cliff Monastery, a Buddhist monastic shared her practice of AND as a pathway to generating happiness, AND as a way to let go of polarizing concepts, such as right and wrong. 

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Dear Friends,

Sometimes I want to show up in a loving way, but I just don’t feel I have the energy for loving anyone or anything. I might want to extend myself and really reflect the love I have in my heart, but instead I collapse or show up cranky. 

Someone in our mindfulness group shared something about this recently that I have been reflecting on.

We were talking about Boundless Love –  the kind of love that we can feel when we are still and quiet. When we touch the insight of interbeing, recognizing that each and every part of the cosmos belongs here. It’s the love that can fill us up and then overflow to others. 

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Dear Friends,

I’ve self identified as codependent since I learned what the word meant (unhealthy attachment to another person/s). I recently had a chance to experience this habit energy in a funny way that led me to a bit more understanding. 

While I was at the Cirque du Soleil, I found myself unable to enjoy the show because somewhere deep inside I believed I was responsible for keeping the performers safe. I’m not kidding. Given the amount of talent, professionalism and training of the performers and my little seat in the 35th row, that was clearly a delusional belief. 

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Dear friends,

Even in the best of times, it can be challenging to get out of bed and remember to practice mindfulness. When I remember to start my day with some mindful action, such as a few mindful breaths or steps, my day may not be perfect, but it does lean toward more ease and joy. 

Practicing mindfulness in the morning can still include other more typical activities like enjoying a cup of our favorite coffee drink (or my new favorite Oolong tea.) And it doesn’t mean we have to be all perky and bubbly. (I surely am not.) 

I read somewhere that we can think of each day as a room that no one has ever gone into before. The day can be an exploration that is experienced in this particular way only by us and only this once. Mindfulness helps me hold onto this openhearted and attentive mindset throughout the day.

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Dear Friends,

Anger is an interesting topic to reflect on. It’s something that arises naturally in us in response to seeing or feeling pain. It may arise when we want to protect something precious, such as ourselves or innocent people. There are ways to practice cooling the dangerous flames of anger, without suppressing it entirely, that can leave us with valuable embers of energy pointing us toward greater love.

Both the Buddha and Thich Nhat Hanh (Thay) taught about anger and how to work with it. In an interview with the author bell hooks, Thay said:

“To be angry, that is very human. And to learn how to smile at your anger and make peace with your anger is very nice. That is the whole thing—the meaning of the practice, of the learning. By taking a look at your anger it can be transformed into the kind of energy that you need—understanding and compassion.”

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Dear Friends,

Our minds and hearts are exposed to so much suffering in these times. We see children being killed by bombs, young adults having mental health crises, and carjacking and cancer all over the TV and internet.

Our brains are wired for empathy, which is wonderful. Because we can feel the suffering of others, we have a better sense of how to act in order to reduce their pain. 

I’m not sure our brains were designed to receive the amount of suffering we receive each day. So many of us feel overwhelmed by all we see and hear. Our mirror neurons reflect the suffering we see out there and create suffering within us. 

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Dear Friends,

In my last email I wrote about our habits and how we can begin to shift them.

This week I want to share about a very specific habit that I recently transformed (at least for the time being) and how it offers me the inner silence and stillness needed to develop deep awareness and touch joy.

Before I went on my 6-week retreat to Plum Village in October, I had a pretty strong habit of listening to podcasts anytime I wasn’t listening to anything else. For example, when I walked the dogs, when I showered, when I drove, etc.

After my time at the monastery (where I did not listen to any podcasts or watch any television) I realized how much space those podcasts were taking up in my head and thus how many minutes and hours I missed being present for what I was doing. Even though the shows were supportive in nature – they were mostly Buddhist or self-help related – they took away the time and attention that my mind needed to settle and deeply experience my life.

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Dear friends,

This time of year we often create “New Year's Resolutions” in order to fix behaviors or areas of our lives we feel aren’t “right.”

I’d like you to consider a different way of looking at the habits that you no longer enjoy.

Start by getting to know one habit and why it is the way it is. What good feeling is this particular habit trying to offer you (even when it misses the mark)? If it weren’t offering you something, you would not be doing it. For example, you might find yourself scrolling social media more often than you like. Looking deeply, you may find that scrolling provides you with a feeling of relaxation, at least at first.

Being gentler with your habit energies (the energies that push you to continue a habit) and offering them more space to express what they need, can already begin to create a shift. We rarely win a direct tug-of-war with our habits (a fact you probably already know).

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Dear Friends,

I am just back from six wonderful weeks on retreat at Plum Village. Our days were book-ended with meditation daily at 5:30AM and 8:00PM. In between we did lots of working meditation, dharma talks, dharma sharing, and outdoor walking meditations.

One of the biggest differences between life here in Washington DC and life at Plum Village is the pace at which we move. One of the basic practices taught by Thich Nhat Hanh (Thay) and one at the heart of Plum Village life is slowing down. In this upcoming holiday season, we may be pushed to move very fast, but I believe we can find ways to resist the rushing and live with more ease.

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