come here

October 17th, 2010    -    10 Comments

I’m about to leave Portland, and like every place I go, I love it. I love it on sight. I love it without effort. I love it simply because I’m here, and because Portland is too. It reminds me that I love my life every time I actually step foot into it.

When I drove to LAX on Friday morning under clouds and drizzle I thought to myself, This reminds me of Portland. When I got to the Portland airport that afternoon I thought to myself, This reminds me of Milwaukee or Denver. On the windy waterfront later having clam chowder I thought, This reminds me of Boston or San Francisco. At the little church where I spoke I thought This reminds me of Minnesota or Scottsdale. Some women walked in and I recognized them, and they reminded me where we had last met. Seattle.

The real world is like this, when you meet it face to face. It always reminds you that you’re home.

I like to sum things up as simply as possible, so when I give a talk, I say, “Everything I say, the whole point of the teaching, the only reason I’m here is to get you to come here.” Then I stick my index finger out and curl it toward me, “Come here!” And by that I mean come out of the confines of your head and all those thoughts that tell you what you can’t do or where you can’t go and come into the bright wide open field before you. “Make yourself at home here,” I say, “in your life.”

But today I see that’s only half of it. The whole point of the teaching is to get me to come out, to step forward, to keep going, so I can meet you and love you on sight, without effort. Because there’s no place like home, and no place that isn’t already home.

Thank you, all of you, for always encouraging me in my practice.

babies and bathwater in Portland

October 6th, 2010    -    7 Comments

Washing dishes is like bathing a baby Buddha – Thich Nhat Hanh

People often quote this to me as their understanding of mindfulness. I only hope it is not their understanding of dishwashing or baby bathing.

First off, let me be clear. In an absolute sense, dishes are indeed the baby Buddha. The Buddha is indeed the dishes. As is the water, the dishwashing liquid, the scrubber and the baked-on lasagna. Everything is nothing but Mind, which is nothing but Buddha. So this instruction is absolutely true. It’s in the application that the baked-on lasagna gets sticky.

In a relative sense, our understanding of mindfulness poses difficulty. (Any understanding poses difficulty and the relative sense is where all our difficulty lies.) We might infer that we are to bring a certain something extra to the sink, like an attitude of holiness or reverence. Maybe we should slow down and contemplate the sacredness of the task, its deeper meaning and value. We might even extract a self-satisfied fulfillment from how we see ourselves. I’ve finally got it! I’m really washing dishes like bathing a baby Buddha!

Even though the dish is the baby Buddha, it is still a dish. And a baby? A baby is not a dish. To wash the dishes is to wash them as they are: dishes. To bathe a baby is to bathe the baby as it is: squirming, splashing, crying, laughing, slippery. To be mindful is to bring nothing more to your life than what is there already. Seeing things as they are, you already know exactly what to do and how to do it. Wash the dish. Bathe the baby. As they are.

We just forget, and look for something more to add to it than our own straightforward attention. Attention is more than enough. It is pure love for everything in life as it is.

Attention! Someone dropped the baby in Portland! Whether you’re a mother or father, spiritual or not, into Zen or far out of it, come to this event and help me stack the dishes. Please share with anyone who has an interest in peaceful parenting, and especially those who have no interest at all.

Saturday, Oct. 16, 9-3:30 p.m.
Portals of Love: The Spiritual Practice of Parenting
Hosted by Zen Community of Oregon at St. David of Wales Church
Portland, Oregon

If you ever prayed for an easier way to parent, this one day workshop is for you. We’ll examine how to find a spiritual practice amid the demands of home life. If you’re not a parent, you’ll still benefit fully because there is no prerequisite for finding personal peace. The day includes morning coffee and vegetarian lunch, beginning meditation and other mindfulness practices, ample time for personal questions and book signing.

More information and registration here.

returning the gift

October 4th, 2010    -    68 Comments

Between the giver, the receiver and the gift there is no separation – Maezumi Roshi

The world can seem stingy, competitive and cruel. Or it can seem generous, welcoming and kind. A single gift can make the difference, and it always comes back to us. The gift we offer is the same gift we receive. Like the coffee we put into our cup, what we pour out is what we drink in: all of it an inseparable extension of our own hand.

The world I share with author Katrina Kenison is welcoming and kind, because she is, and she brings that out in me. It does me no good to bemoan how rare this quality is in any of the realms I occupy. Cups look empty until we fill them again.

In Katrina’s two books, Mitten Strings for God, and The Gift of an Ordinary Day, she welcomes us into a world infused with natural wisdom. She is the kind of mother we all are, aiming to change her family life for the better amid the inevitable undertow of change itself. She doesn’t pretend to know how. She doesn’t make any self-satisfied assessments. She simply follows her instincts into blind curves and doubt. Settle into the pages of her memoirs and what spills out is the fullness in every mother’s wistful heart. read more

more dalai in your lama

September 29th, 2010    -    15 Comments

Warning: Falling rocks ahead.

A few months ago, a young newspaper reporter asked me a very good question, the kind of question that comes from the mouths of keenly observant babes:

“Do you encounter resistance because you don’t fit the stereotype of a Buddhist teacher?”

Honestly, I had never presumed as much, but it makes sense given the human proclivity to idealize and worship images.

Some people might like a little more Dalai in their Lama, I laughed.

I know I did, at least when I was starting out. And I know that most of us still do, taking a measure of comfort and even confidence when a teacher appears to be so altogether other, so unattainably spiritual, so removedly saintly. It must have drawn me closer, then, when Maezumi Roshi fit the bill of a short, smiling, impish Asian. He was nothing that I thought him to be, but his appearance upheld my standard of the real thing.

Being Maezumi, being a man, being an American, I once heard him say to describe his life, to no one in the room who believed him. We had a stake in him being a holy man.

Why this comes up I’m not so sure, although it may have something to do with an email I received yesterday telling me about a public talk by a revered Buddhist author. The talks are rare, I was told, and routinely sold out. There might not ever be another one, the message urged. I could get on the bandwagon and even make a little profit from the books I sold through my website.

All those things may be true, but this line of thinking does not sit with me, and so I sit with it. read more

a wing and a prayer

September 27th, 2010    -    47 Comments

Do Buddhists pray? This Buddhist does.

Parenthood is like continuous prayer, and these days I’ve been praying a lot:
Dear Lord, let it just be allergies.
Dear Lord, let her sneakers still fit.
Dear Lord, let the lunchbox come home empty.
Dear Lord, let me see her smile.

No matter who or what you pray to, prayer works. If you’re looking for a modern miracle, I say, “Pray.” I don’t have a theological explanation for it, but prayer seems to work by itself. We gather our agitated worries into the palms of our hands, a single point of contemplation, and by our utterance, we release them. We are immediately calmed and comforted by our own action, regardless of any eventual outcomes. For me, prayer is a continuous loop of supplication, surrender and consolation.

Even though it’s not just allergies.
The sneakers no longer fit.
She traded her lunch for someone else’s.
But because the smile, the smile, I still see. read more

love is solid ground

September 23rd, 2010    -    6 Comments

A preciously dear friend has lately recalled light once seen and fallen drunkenly in love with eyesight. She sends me poems each day like valentines and I cannot resist sharing them. Yes, yes, love sees everything exactly as it is, and walks on it, barefoot.

The Opening of Eyes

That day I saw beneath dark clouds
the passing light over the water
and I heard the voice of the world speak out,
I knew then, as I had before
life is no passing memory of what has been
nor the remaining pages in a great book
waiting to be read.

It is the opening of eyes long closed.
It is the vision of far off things seen for the silence they hold.
It is the heart after years of secret conversing
speaking out loud in the clear air.
It is Moses in the desert
fallen to his knees before the lit bush.
It is the man throwing away his shoes
as if to enter heaven
and finding himself astonished,
opened at last,
fallen in love with solid ground.

– David Whyte

Photo of the Portland Japanese Garden. Come meet me on that ground, Oct. 15-16.

hello my name is

September 21st, 2010    -    11 Comments

There exists only the present instant, a Now which always and without end is
itself new. There is no yesterday or any tomorrow, but only Now, as it was a
thousand years ago and as it will be a thousand years hence. – Meister Eckhart

My teacher Nyogen Roshi sent that quote to me in an email recently, suggesting that “you might find it useful in one of your upcoming programs.” Emailing is something we do sparingly, our relationship resting solely on the alchemy of face-to-face proximity. The rarity of his emails ensures that they are highly visible; the fact is, every email I receive is itself rare and highly visible to me, or my practice has lapsed, as Meister Eckhart observes.

On Saturday at the Mother’s Plunge in Boston, I started the way I always start – by introducing myself. “My name is Karen Maezen Miller,” I said, and go on to tell them that “Karen is the name my mother gave me, Maezen is the name my Buddhist teacher gave me, and Miller is the name Mr. Miller gave me.” I use all three names, and in that way I carry forward three streams of wisdom inextricable to every moment of my life and work. My name is not just my name. It is my teaching. When I state my name I am also stating my practice: the realization that no part of my life is more or less important. No part battles with another because there are no parts. It is all one life and all one practice.

Among the many practical aspects of Zen training is the protocol of its form: the way certain customs are prescribed and therefore serve to eradicate self-consciousness and confusion. Zen training tells us where to put our arms and legs, for instance, which is a question of considerable consternation for most of us most of the time. Practical too is the protocol of my formal practice in the dokusan room, the private interview room within which I meet and work with my teacher face-to-face. Although I have practiced with Nyogen Roshi for 10 years, every time I meet with him in dokusan, which is at least once a week (and once a day during retreats) I begin by introducing myself. read more

absence of explanation

September 16th, 2010    -    2 Comments

In the absence of an explanation, Amazon is currently telling its customers that it could take up to four months to get a paperback copy of Hand Wash Cold. Need I tell you this is a bold-faced lie? A scheming way to rev up backorders and Kindle sales?

I’ll simply tell you to go here, to the web home of of the artfully inexplicable Terri Fischer, to nab your own free copy. She has numerous gifts to bestow, and she’s not withholding them. There you will see, absent explanation, not only how to get the laundry, but your own life back.

all mother, no hood

September 14th, 2010    -    16 Comments

I think I’ll set my alarm in the morning, she said.
It was the last night before the first day of fifth grade.
I think I’ll get dressed before breakfast, she told herself.
A starting day delayed by state budget cuts and teacher furloughs, compounded by peculiarities of the calendar, had me bracing for a hard reveille on this, the 14th of September already.
I want to be early.
I was still in bed when she tapped me gently on the shoulder. I opened my eyes to see her beside me in her new, first-day dress, hair brushed, jacket on, standing noble and ready, like Liberty herself.
She whispered.
Good morning, Mommy.

This is the kind of day that jolts you into a reality so easily forgotten – a cataclysmic moment when you realize life’s perpetual motion, when you experience for yourself the awesome rush of the scientific fact that there is no such thing as solid ground. There is no permanent state, no place to dwell. Here we are in the middle of motherhood, and there’s no ‘hood to hold onto. We are all, indeed, the mothers of exiles, heartbreakingly homeless and free.

As so often happens without accident, my friend and fellow author Amy Tiemann is musing about this very topic today, and you should read her here and respond here. We should all read and wonder and weep, but not in grief. Our children grow up. Do we?

We walked down the sloping sidewalk to the fifth grade bungalows and she leaned in closer.
I’m nervous, she said. I’m terrified, actually.
I assured her that this, yes, this, would be her finest year, her greatest time, her crowning glory. I have no doubt it will be.
Her friends in range, she walked faster in front as I hauled the sacks of school supplies to her classroom. I lost her in the surge.
Georgia, I called out, do you need me?
She turned back and waved.

I’m crying now, but not in loss. Crying is what mothers do with the fullness that can’t be kept, with the love that never ends. Cry, and wave, and hold a flame along the way that grows longer away.

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look at why I practice

September 13th, 2010    -    9 Comments

An acknowledgment of all those who joined me yesterday at the Beginner’s Mind Meditation Retreat at the Hazy Moon Zen Center. You know who you are. More importantly, you are beginning to really know who you are.

When wisdom is a concept, look how ignorant I am in the name of wisdom.
When love is a concept, look how hateful I am in the name of love.
When charity is a concept, look how greedy I am in the name of charity.
When kindness is a concept, look how mean I am in the name of kindness.
When beauty is a concept, look at what I defile in the name of beauty.
When freedom is a concept, look who I imprison in the name of freedom.
When truth is a concept, look who I deceive in the name of truth.
When faith is a concept, look how fearful I am in the name of faith.
When peace is a concept, look how much chaos I create in the name of peace.
When life and death are concepts, look what I destroy in the name of life.

To overcome my own ignorance, hate, greed, meanness, defilement, imprisonment, deception, fear, chaos and death. This is why I practice.

If you’re on the other coast, there’s still time to join me this Sat., Sept. 18 at the Mother’s Plunge in Boston. I’ll be looking for you!

random acts

September 13th, 2010    -    No Comments

Announcing the winners of last week’s book giveaways, all randomly drawn:

The winner of Brad Warner’s new Sex, Sin and Zen: Kendra, commenter #14

The winner of Hand Wash Cold: Kristin, commenter #43

The winner of Sitting Moon and Momma Zen: Jessica, commenter #14

“When we notice life, really notice, it is the birth of everlasting goodness. We might see through the illusion we’ve created for ourselves, as separate and inviolable, and do something nice for a change.” – Hand Wash Cold

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sitting moon

September 10th, 2010    -    47 Comments

Mei Mei (little sister), after you give birth, it is extremely important for me to come and live with you for a month. I’ll take care of you so that you can experience the proper Zuo Yue Zi.” – A mother to her daughter in Sitting Moon

“Where once, in recent history and ancient practices, families of women surrounded women at this hour, now so many of us have so few.” – Momma Zen

Zuo Yue Zi literally translates as “sitting month,” or “moon.” Ancient cultures cared for new mothers with the same attention devoted to newborns, swaddling them in a cocoon of nourishment, rest and reverence lasting a full lunar cycle after giving birth. During a time when we might think of a month with relatives as less than optimal – and most of us have little or no help at all – Sitting Moon outlines the modern equivalent of postpartum wisdom drawn from the ancient feminine.

With plainspoken simplicity, the authors (both professionals in the field of Chinese medicine) air the litany of unthinkables that greet us in the long and isolating months after giving birth, as we otherwise stumble toward some fractured “normal” of emotional and physical health. The book seasons its common sense with clear diagnostics, helpful tips, recommended foods and Chinese herbs, acupressure directions and a full four-week meal plan with recipes – for someone else to cook for you! – geared to the natural sequence of rejuvenation.

In the view of Oriental medicine, a lifetime of chronic ills can be traced to the postpartum period – that mysterious and irrevocable transition when life changes in every way forever. Sitting Moon is what I would have given myself, if I’d had the means to ask. So now I’ll give it to you.

Enter my giveaway for a copy of Sitting Moon: A Guide to Natural Rejuvenation After Pregnancy by leaving a comment on this post. I’ll pair the prize with a signed copy of Momma Zen – two must-haves that give a new mama all the light of the mother moon.

Give yourself an extra chance by tweeting the following (make sure you get the URL):

RT @kmaezenmiller Double Giveaway: Sitting Moon & Momma Zen http://bit.ly/dvg8Rs

Note to readers: Amazon supplies are running low; Sitting Moon is also available directly from the Tao of Wellness.

This is the grand finale in my week of book giveaways, but there’s still time to enter Monday’s giveaway and Wednesday’s giveaway (as many times as you like) before the contest closes at midnight this Sunday, Sept. 12. Thank you for sharing this fortune with me!

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unfailingly generous

September 8th, 2010    -    86 Comments

When I first heard that Lori Deschene of the hugely popular inspirational site Tiny Buddha was going to review Hand Wash Cold, I wondered how she would define my life’s work.

After all, plenty of people don’t like the book, and a goodly number don’t hesitate to say so. Compared to Momma Zen‘s sweetly sentimental musings about the transcendent love of motherhood, Hand Wash Cold can smack some people upside the head like a wet, stinky dishrag. As Deschene writes:

Most of us don’t want to be ordinary. We want to be special. We want to live bold, extraordinary lives punctuated by moments of passion, excitement, and adventure.

We want to fill our days with people, things, and activities that make us feel vibrant, and outsource the rest to someone else – someone paid to handle the mundane.

We want to discover something, uncover something, build something, invent something, found something, prove something – be something. We want to be extraordinary. We want to be excellent. We want to be great – or at least moving in that direction.

I don’t write about how to do any of that. I don’t write about the life all of us wish we had. You can read something else if you’re still looking for that. Almost anything else will deliver the promise of escape to somewhere – anywhere – else. Instead, as Deschene says about my approach:

She turns herself inside out to reveal her vulnerability, her ego, her humanity – everything you might assume doesn’t exist underneath the trappings of priesthood. She is unfailingly generous in sharing her own journey to right here and now.

Despite my failings, Tiny Buddha has inspired me to be unfailingly generous all over again.  I’m giving away a signed copy of Hand Wash Cold right here and now. Leave a comment to enter. Double your chances by tweeting the following.

RT @kmaezenmiller Giveaway: Hand Wash Cold http://bit.ly/a3rxE0

Note to Readers: Hand Wash Cold is on back order at Amazon, but personally signed copies are always available on the Books page of my website. Click “Special Friends Offer”

It’s giveaway week! I’ll be giving away books on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Check back and enter often. Winners for all three, including, Brad Warner’s latest eyebrow-raiser, drawn next Sunday, Sept. 12.

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