Because it is impossible to hold, I hold it.
Because it is impossible to hold, it is a word.
Because it is impossible to hold, it fills everything.
Because it is impossible to hold, it falls down.
Because it is impossible to hold, it stands up.
Because it is impossible to hold, it breathes.
Because it is impossible to hold, it lets go.
Because it is impossible to hold, it never leaves.
Because it is impossible to hold, it never ends.
Because it is impossible to hold, love keeps forever.
Water birds
going and coming
their traces disappear
but they never
forget their path.
— Dogen, “On Nondependence of Mind”
For a week I’ve had a thought every so often to write a blog post entitled “Leave No Trace.” Then the thought would disappear and I wouldn’t do it. When I sat down just now to write, I realized that I had not visited this site for twenty-eight days or written anything new for thirty-nine days. In the meantime, my site meter had stopped working. The traffic stats for this website thus appear as a vast empty stretch of tracelessness, as if a flock of birds could fly right through it. Something probably happened over the interval — a few visits here, a few there, two thousand spam comments — but nothing was recorded so I don’t know or even care. While I was so nobly intending to hold forth on the Dharma wisdom of “Leave No Trace,” the Dharma was expounding itself without me.
Isn’t that wonderful?
Your site meter can stop and it doesn’t mean you are dead. You can do nothing and everything still happens. You can leave no trace and you won’t fall into a void of extinction. But you might notice that you are a little less self-obsessed, a little less devoted to fame and popularity, less dependent on recognition and praise, less inclined to argue and blame. This is the subtle and profound wisdom of Zen instruction. You don’t lose anything when you leave no trace but the notion of your own ever-loving importance.
The Dharma is always expounded in the absence of self.
When I first began to attend Zen retreats, or sesshins, I’d see the short admonition posted throughout the retreat grounds. Leave No Trace was taped to the corner of the bathroom mirror, propped by the coffee pot, and hanging above the kitchen sink. It secretly pleased me because I thought it validated my own tendency toward obsessive-compulsive tidiness. Wipe your feet! Clean up after yourself! Rinse your own cup! It does quite literally mean those things. But it also means much more. Leaving no trace is a practice that goes on well after you clean your shoes, brush your teeth, and wash a lifetime of coffee cups. No trace is aimed at getting rid of all the petty offenses, inconveniences, and problems in your life: namely, you. Or should I say, me.
Do I have a problem with you? That’s me.
Am I irritated? That’s me.
Do I feel unappreciated? That’s me.
Distracted? That’s me.
Disrespected or misunderstood? That’s me.
Do I feel the need to explain my personal history and point of view so that you can validate my experience? That’s me.
Am I angry at you? That’s me.
Am I struggling with things around me? That’s me.
Do I feel vulnerable, ashamed, defensive, unworthy, or victimized? That’s me.
Uninspired, resistant, and unsure? That’s me.
Do I feel like I leave a big blot of ugly trouble wherever I go? Every day.
Water birds are not dependent on a particular place. When they are on the ground, they function on the ground. On the water, they function on the water. In the sky, they function in the sky. They function perfectly and intuitively wherever they are, moving from one place to another by spontaneous instinct, never lost and never leaving a trace of where they’ve been.
What does it mean to “leave no trace?” It means leave no meaning.
This post was originally published as “The problem with you is me” on April 27, 2015, but then it disappeared. Isn’t that wonderful?
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If you ever wondered what you are supposed to teach your child, please read this and learn from me.
It was Thursday afternoon about four-thirty. Georgia was racing through her mound of homework before we left for gym practice at five. (Do math, do science, write a poem.) The minutes were ticking.
This is where it gets sticky.
She’s finishing gluing drawings into her “Silk Road Journal” (16 pages, front and back, history project due the next day) when she lets out a high shriek. The glue has exploded out the cap from a hard squeeze and blanketed two whole pages. The booklet is a soppy mess. Her artwork is doused. She sobs. I stiffen. She collapses. I look at the clock. And what I think I see is no more time.
I really think that time is up.
How is it that a girl and her mother can get stuck between two pages of the Silk Road Journal? Wedged between the pitiless hours of four and five on a Thursday? Strung between almost-done and starting over? Knotted, tangled and ripped in two?
I don’t want to tell you.
I don’t want to tell you what I told her. About what she didn’t do, didn’t plan, and didn’t finish soon enough. About how little and how late. The cause and the fault. How I couldn’t and wouldn’t and didn’t know how to help. And what did she expect me to do?
Then she turned to me, through her sobs and streaked cheeks, and asked me the one thing that is still so hard for me to do.
Why don’t you just be the mom? Why don’t you encourage me?
Why can’t I just be the mom, and not the taskmaster, the lecturer, the appointments manager, the critic, the cynic, and the know-it-all? What is more important to show her than love? What is there always time for?
All great people, in their profound humility, remember their mothers most. They remember a mother who believed in them. And no matter how late, believed that there was still time. No matter how little, that there was enough. No matter how dismal the prospects, that it was possible. A mother who loved without measure, without schedule and without hurry. A mother who was just the mom.
So we blew off the timetable and moved to the dinner table. I gave her all the room she needed. She spread out and started over, using all the time it took. It went slow, but I encouraged her. She might have learned a lesson about glue, but I learned a lesson that I pray will stick.
When we realize that our child is not the child, then we begin to practice parenthood. It’s never too late to for me to grow up and be the mom. In fact, it’s time I did.
Originally published on Feb. 27, 2012, proving that it’s always time to just be the mom.
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So much love.
The neonatologist, wheeling us out of NICU for the drive home: “Don’t worry. She’s strong and full of life.”
My mother, wearing a wig after chemo, holding my daughter for the first time: “I never thought this would happen.”
The pediatrician, about my difficulty breastfeeding: “Don’t let this come between you and your baby.”
The best friend, whenever I needed it: “She looks like you.”
The babysitter, on her first day: “We love each other already!”
The grandmother at the park, remembering life with her twin babies: “I had to get the laundry going every morning by 9.”
The nursery school teacher, before she had words: “She is a genius.”
The stranger watching her hoist herself to the top of the slide: “She’ll be a gymnast one day.”
The kindergarten teacher, on our first visit to the classroom: “I’d say she’s ready.”
The teacher at the parent conference: “She’s friends with everyone.”
The gymnastics coach: “You can be on our team.”
A fellow parent confronting the mystery of sixth grade math: “I have faith that they will figure it out.”
The Algebra teacher: “You know you can do it. Just give yourself time.”
The friend, after her admission to art school: “It’s what she was born to do.”
The English teacher, even after her panic attack in the classroom: “She’s the kind of student who will do well anywhere.”
Her counselor, when she had been frightfully sad, lonely and confused: “What an amazing young woman your daughter is.”
My mother, knowing her time was near: “I’ve often thought she came to take my place.”
Remembering so many mothers on the anniversary of my mother’s passing April 13, 2001.
We were about 300 miles from home in stop-and-go traffic in the middle of the Mohave Desert just inside the state line when the dashboard lit up.
Brake Malfunction!
Stop the vehicle immediately and contact dealer.
It’s trouble enough to be in stop-and-go traffic in the middle of nowhere 300 miles from LA, but the slow homestretch of a Spring Break road trip had just turned from hypnotic boredom into naked terror.
To the touch, the brakes seemed fine, but the failures were spreading. A new light screamed Check ABS/VSC! (Like we knew what that meant.) I flipped through the 400-page owner’s manual for clues. It didn’t tell us anything. We pulled off on the shoulder and checked the emergency brake. Not it. And the brake fluid. Not it. There was nowhere else to get help. So we flowed back onto the crowded road, dash warnings blinking, up the high pass through the San Bernardino mountains and down the steep grades of the San Gabriel mountains, through thicker and faster traffic until we pulled into the driveway and exhaled.
We are lucky to have an honest mechanic in our town, and I stopped by his place the next day. I was surprised he wasn’t there. It had me more worried when no one answered the phone all afternoon, but he answered when I rang in the morning.
Is everything OK? I asked because I knew it wasn’t.
It’s really not. Last month he was working on a car while the engine was running, and he put his hand where he shouldn’t have, nearly cutting off a finger. Since then he’d been at doctors and hospitals, desperate to save an otherwise useless finger that he thought would cost him his work, his business, his home, and the future. He talked for 30 minutes, and I wanted him to. I wanted to listen and let him be afraid and angry and unsure. I wanted to be more than a customer. I wanted to be a decent human being like him. That’s really what his job is, just being decent, so he said, go ahead and bring the car down and I’ll check it while you wait.
Turns out there was nothing wrong. Maybe a low battery charge in the hybrid engine while we were stalled in traffic caused a bad sensor reading or something that I didn’t really catch the gist of. He wouldn’t let me pay him, but he let me listen while he told me about the hassle of scheduling a blood test before the next surgery, how upset and distracted he felt, and how unfair and impossible things were looking for him today. I believed him.
Let’s just see how it goes, he said then, and it caught my ear. He meant I should drive the car around town and see if the warnings came on but he was pretty sure everything was fine. I said I’d be back to check on him. It didn’t sound like much, but it’s all that decent human beings can do for each other when life is spinning out of control: share the road home.
Freedom is instantaneous the moment we accept things as they are.
Lion’s Roar Retreat: Finding Freedom From Painful Emotions
July 29-31
Garrison Institute
Garrison, NY
Scholarships are available. Click here to learn more about scholarships.
Featuring Karen Maezen Miller | Anyen Rinpoche | Josh Korda
Anger, fear, depression—we all experience the pain of powerful emotions. Buddhism offers unique insights and techniques that help to us explore and understand emotional energy and patterns. Ultimately, we can work with emotions and discover the wisdom within them.
Join us as we gather for a weekend of practice, quiet contemplation, and discussion with the support and guidance of these three teachers from the Zen, Tibetan and Insight traditions.
1. Will meditation help me focus? Yes.
2. Can I meditate without sitting on the floor? Yes.
3. Can I meditate without being a Buddhist? Yes.
4. Do I have enough time to meditate? Yes.
5. Should I start? Yes.
Beginner’s One-Day Meditation Retreat
Sunday, March 20
Hazy Moon Zen Center
Los Angeles
Register by email here
Years and years ago when I was young and busy and my mother was alive, I would rarely call home. So when I did, it was a sign. If my father answered, he wouldn’t stay on the line for longer than a minute because he knew something was up, and my mother would have walked into the kitchen and looked at him questioningly.
“It’s Karen,” he’d say as he handed her the receiver.
Then she would get on the line and say, “Karen.”
And just like that she was there, all of her, for me, which was why I called, and I would start crying.
I called because I was going to make a C in Contemporary American Poetry. Because I’d totaled my car. Because I was going to get married. Because I was going to get a divorce. I had called because I needed her, which happened a lot more than just the times I called, but I was the one who isolated herself, the quiet one, the one who stayed away. And she always let me.
One time in my early 30s, I had to have surgery for endometriosis. This is a diagnosis that doesn’t need major surgery these days, but in those days it meant a week in the hospital and six weeks at home. When I woke up a day after surgery she was sitting in a chair opposite me and although I’m sure this was part of the plan I couldn’t imagine how she had transported herself to my side. She had a bag of books or magazines or work papers with her and she was settled in and I knew that she wouldn’t leave. She stayed a week with me in the hospital and a week at home where she brought me soup and crackers in bed like it was nothing and she asked nothing. She always knew how to ask for nothing.
Later on, older and married again, I moved to another state and I was for some time unbearably sad and afraid of what I’d done. I called that time and asked if she would come for a visit.
“I was just waiting for you to ask,” she said.
***
When I go to a retreat somewhere new, the group of us, mostly strangers, sit with one another in a silent room for five or six or eight hours a day, and there isn’t any conversation. We sit in the quiet, and walk around in the quiet, and follow the schedule to show up at certain times and be quiet together again. And after awhile or certainly by the end you might realize that you have been sitting in a net, and that you are actually part of the net that’s holding you and everyone else up. After all that time and right before you go home you have the chance to speak. Someone will say something like this:
This is the first time I’ve ever done this. I had no idea what I was doing. I’ve read all of your books and they’ve helped me so much and I always told myself that if I ever had the chance I would come to one of your retreats and then I saw that you’d actually be here and I couldn’t believe it and I had to come.
There are usually tears by then and not much more to say, but so much more you can’t even say, and I want them to know everything my mother wanted me to know if I ever asked.
I’m here.
From the moment you wake up until you close your eyes at night, there are simple yet powerful ways to be more mindful at home. And now I can tell you about it in your own home.
You are invited to be a part of a free, short online class I will be teaching on Tuesday, Feb. 9 at 6 pm PT / 9 pm ET called 10 Tips for a Mindful Home. Not everyone can make it to a meditation retreat, so I am excited to be part of a free one-week Awareness Series with practical, real-life strategies for living with more presence. Just sign up to hear all the teachings either live or anytime later. When you can find a moment to truly listen, you have taken the first step to mindfulness. I hope you’ll tune in!
The robe my mother wore was blue, quilted, ankle-length, with three-quarter sleeves. She had other robes during my years at home, but this is the one I remember. I remember that she wore it when she got up every morning to make breakfast, and had it on when she opened my bedroom door in the dark and said, “Time to get up, Karen.” I remember her in the robe while we ate our breakfast at the kitchen table—scrambled eggs and toast or cereal and milk—and then we hurriedly got dressed and went to school and her, to work.
My mother did her very best at everything. I would have called her excellent. Our house was small and clean. Sometimes if you looked closely you could see that things were not always so nice. When she wore the blue robe everything seemed warm and safe and reliable. The days began in the same way. There was always breakfast. We were always on time. My mother wasn’t sentimental or silly about anything. She was at all times grown up and good.
None of this may have happened the way I tell it except for the blue bathrobe and the feeling of being loved.
***
There is a lull that opens up between a mother and a daughter. A trench, a sinkhole, a grave and terrible silence. Feelings are overwhelming. Conversation is impossible. Words are dangerous. The truth can seem unbearably close and yet a million miles away.
***
I saw a plush pink bathrobe hanging in the window of a store in town and I knew I would have to buy it. It was expensive but I didn’t care. I took it home and laid it on my daughter’s bed so she would see it the minute she got home.
She put on the robe that night. Then she put it on every night. She would say that she was about to take a long bath and if she washed her hair would I dry it? She would tell me that she was going to take a break and Facetime with a friend. Have some tea with honey. Toast before bed. And twice, seeing me, she would smile, come over and embrace me in a plush hug, suddenly so grown up and good, a mother to a child.
None of this may have happened the way I tell it except for the pink bathrobe and the most excellent, unforgettable feeling of being loved.
***
noun trans·fig·u·ra·tion : a change in form or appearance : metamorphosis : an exalting, glorifying, or spiritual change
Jim Dine, 1984: The Robe Following Her
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When I travel around the country for meditation retreats, they usually take place in rooms that weren’t designed for Zen meditation. We may come together in a converted barn, for instance, or a basement, conference room or classroom. All that matters is that the room be empty. Then into the space we put a little bit of the form, or appearance, of a Zen retreat.
That means a bell, a statue of Buddha, and if allowed, a candle and incense; cushions or chairs; and a schedule of seated meditation, walking meditation, and chanting services throughout the day. It sometimes seems to me like we fashion a retreat out of popsicle sticks, but somehow it works.
To a beginner, the form appears strange. It’s rarely anything you’ve done before; classical Zen is not exactly a free-for-all. It’s important to see that the form of a retreat isn’t imposed, like a rule. It is offered, like a life raft. Form gives us a place and a way to rescue ourselves from ourselves. What do I do now, our crazy mind shrieks. Do this, form tells us. But how, we wail. Like this, the form shows us, and we have one less thing to fret about.
One of the first things I invite people to do at a retreat is write down the name of someone who is suffering, someone other than themselves. Even though people come to a retreat to get something—something called Zen—we automatically receive the benefit of our own practice. The point is to extend the benefit to others. The names go onto our retreat sick list which is chanted out loud as part of each day’s service. People might offer the name of someone who has cancer or is going through a personal calamity. Someone ill, elderly, or near death. We all know someone in those straits, and those are the first names that come to mind.
At the first morning service, people are self-conscious. Anyone would be. They are chanting things they don’t understand, mumbling words and syllables that don’t make sense. The chant leader is trying to find the right rhythm and pitch; the names on the sick list are mangled. But this is practice: everyone doing everything together for the first time. There is no criticism spoken, but of course, we often judge ourselves harshly.
With each service, the chanting grows clearer and more confident, and each morning the sick list grows a little bit longer. In our empty room, our minds are growing clearer. We think more compassionately of others when we stop obsessing about ourselves. We might approach the chant leader and ask, can I add one more name to the list?
On the last day of retreat, the chanting is strong and beautiful. The words merge in one voice. All are alert and present. The chant leader makes a point of sounding out each syllable. The names are carefully pronounced, and the list is twice as long. That’s when I hear the names of our children, partners, and parents: people who may not be distressed except by what we say to them, what we do to them, what we expect of them, and what we think of them. We have, by the last day, forgotten ourselves, and in that forgetting, taken responsibility for everything and everyone. After saying the last name on the list, the chant leader intones the final benediction:
May they be serene through all their ills
and may we accomplish the Buddha Way together
And in that instant, they are, and we do.
***
Even when it’s made of popsicle sticks, there is room in the raft.
Come sit by me.
Zen Retreat: Meditation as Love
Feb. 5-7, 2016
Kripalu
Stockbridge, MA
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don’t be curious about clouds
where they come, where they go
water in the sky
be curious about water
be curious about sky
cave painters who chiseled rocks
painted in blood,
burnt bones,
piss and spit
never stayed in caves
be curious about rocks
be curious about blood
come out come out
be curious about sky
be curious about water
flowing
Stonehenge, still standing after thousands of years, was, apparently, quarried and originally constructed at a Neolithic site in Wales; many centuries later, it was taken apart and pulled on sledges about a hundred and forty miles east, to be rebuilt at its present location.*
Last year about this time I told my husband our new azaleas were dying. The leaves looked like rust, and I thought I knew why. Not enough water, too much sun, the wrong plants in the wrong place, the money for nothing, the work wasted. Before pulling the dead ones out, he snipped some leaves and took them to the nursery. That’s when I learned something new.
The leaves of some evergreen azaleas turn red in winter.
Even good drivers in the morning rain
don’t see the other car coming.
Paint nicks. Glass cracks.
One world ends before another.
You are not safe.
So remember what your mother has told you:
Effect is the noun. Affect is the verb.
When in doubt, leave out the comma.
Add salt. Use butter.
Never serve food you haven’t tasted first.
Rinse stains in cold water.
Sunlight is the best disinfectant.
Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow
but soon and for the rest of your life.
You’ll see.
In springtime, flowers bloom.
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