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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fill-in-the-blank sex

September 6th, 2010    -    60 Comments

I read Brad Warner’s new book and panted over it. It’s called Sex, Sin and Zen: A Buddhist Exploration of Sex from Celibacy to Polyamory and Everything in Between. If you’d like to have more ___ in your life, enter my giveaway of the book by leaving a message on this post.

Brad is very clever, but what matters more is that Brad is very clear. Clarity about ___, let alone clarity about the practice of Buddhism, is rare.

Nothing new can be said about sex, nor does it need to be said. The obsession with sex is just a placeholder for all ego-driven delusions about life and death. Everything we think and say about sex applies to any other delusion.  If only I had more ___ I’d be satisfied. I need ___ right now or I’ll go crazy! If you really loved me, you’d give me  ___.  Everyone seems like they have better ___ than I do. I can’t live without ___!

I don’t know nearly as much about sex as Brad Warner does (like, what is polyamory?) but Brad knows his followers and reads their minds.  What’s on their minds is “Sex sex sex!” From time to time, my readers think about sex as well, but what troubles them more often is something like this, “We’re out of Palmolive Antibacterial.” read more

the unlabors of love

September 1st, 2010    -    1 Comment

“See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin.”
– Matthew 6:28

I spent Monday with a friend whom I don’t see as often as I’d like. We sat outside in the shade while our daughters splashed in the last shimmers of summer. It’s been a busy season for her: always steering one child here or there, another starting behind the wheel, the eldest packed and gone for the first year of college. “This is the only time all summer I’ve sat down,” my friend said, sinking deep and slow into the weave of a warm lounge chair. I said little, and yet she relaxed into my every word, even into the pauses between the words.

This long weekend we welcome another friend and her daughter from the Midwest. She told me that since I saw her last in May she’s sold her home, moved into another and transitioned her father into a retirement center. I’m plumping up the sofa bed so she can sink into the quiet of this simple house and not lift another thing, at least for four days.

We have an enormous capacity to love one another simply by showing up. Really, that’s all I ever do! If you grant yourself the time to show up here in return, I have two things for you to relish over this Labor Day Weekend. They are the unlabors of my love, and they will bring you rest. read more

turning life into love

August 23rd, 2010    -    7 Comments

When I was at San Francisco’s Grace Cathedral this spring, I asked the audience what they thought turned the inside of the church into a sanctuary. Was it the concrete walls?

When I was leading walking meditation in the chapel at Seattle’s Bastyr University in June, I asked the people with me what turned the ground under their feet into a pathway. Was it the terrazzo tile?

When I was at a yoga studio in suburban Milwaukee last Saturday, I asked the group in front of me to notice the change that occurred in the room from the time we convened at 2 p.m. until the hour we dispersed at 4 p.m. What turned the mildly restless, self-conscious discomfort at the start of our time together into the vast, settled calm at the end? Into a still and quiet ease so deep that no one cared to move? So satisfying that no one rose to leave?

The answer is you. The secret is yours. The power of your own nonjudgmental attention is what transforms space into spaciousness. It turns your wandering into the way. It transforms your life into love.

And now we’ll do the same in Boston when we gather for the Mother’s Plunge on Saturday, Sept. 18.  I’m so pleased that we’ll be meeting at the Seaport Academy, a therapeutic day school for adolescents who need extra attention to navigate the perils of growing up. The students will not be there the day we are, but your attention will, and your attention will transform our humble gathering into the spaciousness of infinite potential. Come see for yourself what the power of your love can do. We’ll leave some of it behind, and you can take the rest home with you.

And if you’re not on the East Coast on Sept. 18, come to the one-day meditation retreat I’m leading in LA on Sept. 12. We’ll turn our attention onto a bare white wall and unleash the wild blue yonder. You don’t have to believe it; you just have to see it.

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i stop for brakes

August 20th, 2010    -    3 Comments

There was a little article in the paper about a week ago that broke my heart. My heart breaks a lot, and you might be surprised what will do it. This was a piece that topped the news for less than a day.

“Driver error caused Toyota’s ‘runaway’ cars.” That was the indisputable conclusion from the government’s initial probe into the unintended acceleration scare that convulsed the country and crippled the company earlier this year.

If there wasn’t some mysterious electronic flaw, what caused all those incident reports that triggered the massive recalls and indignant congressional investigations? Sixty percent of the time, the report showed, cars kept going because there was a complete absence of braking. In another 25 percent of cases, brakes were only partially applied. We can deduce that the cars kept going because drivers kept pressing the accelerators.

Does that make you want to stop for a minute?

I’m on a roll! Read the rest of this rant and comment at The Smartly LA.

just one life

August 18th, 2010    -    9 Comments

We were side by side in the spinning class this morning when she turned to me and spoke over the pounding pulse of the imaginary road beneath us. We got into it last night. I nodded, and knew. After I made my plans and sent out the invitations, he won’t take the kids that weekend. The lonely long stretch of it, the gaping ache of betrayal. You just can’t do that! At every turn, the shock and sudden crumble. I know what he’s doing. He’s taking her and her kids on vacation. Another raging tremble. It’s more than we ever think we can bear. And I thought to myself “she should read my book.”
We rode.
We all ride.
Sometimes it’s steep.
We sweat and cry.
A slope, and then it’s harder yet.
Farther still and finally
The last gasp.

Class over, we slide off the bikes and she says to me “I should read your book.”
I wish you would, I say, because there’s just one life and I want you to know.
It’s not over yet.

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head over wisconsin

August 16th, 2010    -    5 Comments

Whenever Roso saw a monk coming, he immediately sat facing the wall. Hearing of this, Nansen said, “I usually tell my people to realize what has existed before the kalpa of emptiness, or to understand what has been before Buddhas appeared in the world. Still, I haven’t acknowledged one disciple or even a half. If he continues that way, he will go on endlessly.” – Case 23, Shoyoroku

I hate it when people talk about koans. I’m going to Wisconsin next weekend. This gives me a chance to talk about koans.

First, Wisconsin:
Extraordinary Ordinary: How to Fall in Love with the Life You Already Have
Sat., August 21, 2-4 p.m.
YogAsylum, Brookfield WI
Register by clicking here or arrive at the door
A wisdom teaching and book signing

Just this morning at the yoga class I teach in my dinky little hometown 2,042 miles from Wisconsin, someone told me his sister was coming to see me next Saturday in Brookfield. Then I heard from the venue manager, and the kitchen table tour host, one after the other, with last-minute details and well-wishes. All of that and I immediately sat up straighter and faced the trip before me with enthusiasm: “I love Wisconsin!”

Come see me so I can tell you in person.

Now, koans.

What is a koan? Nothing like what you’ve probably heard tell. Take this for instance, a perfectly reasonable and popular definition of koan as “a paradoxical anecdote or a riddle that has no solution.” It’s perfectly reasonable to define koan that way and it is completely wrong. Every koan has a solution; otherwise we wouldn’t train with koans as we do in my Zen lineage. We train with a collection of 750 koans including the one above. By train, I mean that when a teacher directs you to a koan, you meditate with it and then present the depth of your realization of the koan to your teacher in a private meeting. Most of the time, the depth of your realization isn’t deep at all: you just grasp at the meaning off the top of your head. You try to tease out some kind of explanation. At those times, the teacher tells you kindly and straightforwardly to keep working on it, and you are relieved of at least one of your erroneous concepts. read more

best seat in the house

August 12th, 2010    -    6 Comments

You are not nearly this or half of that. You are not almost or over. You are not in the middle of up, or on the way out.

You are all of 11.

And though I’ll never miss a thing, I miss you just the same. Happy birthday, daughter. It’s the time of year to put old clothes away, and party.

My girl was a big girl, her own girl, with her own loves and her own life. I was a spectator, but the show was splendid and I still had the best seat in the house. If I were forever looking forward or lingering too long looking backward, I would miss too much. I would miss it all. – Momma Zen

never farther

August 9th, 2010    -    2 Comments

I am inspired by questions I get about practice. That tells me that you’ve heard the most important thing I can tell you. That tells me that you’re trying.

I am inspired by posts like this.

I am inspired by the talks I’ve been listening to and transcribing every day. Old dharma talks on dusty cassette tapes, in which Maezumi Roshi tells me loud and clear, “This life you are encountering is nothing but the life of the Buddha.” And his question, “How are you living your life as the practice of Buddha Dharma?”

So here I show you what my practice looks like most days, and I snare you into seeing through my eyes. Where is your practice? Only you know; only you can answer. I hope you will.

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swallowing seeds

August 8th, 2010    -    4 Comments

Did you ever swallow watermelon seeds as a kid and wait for the vine to creep up your throat?

Luckily for me, my teacher Nyogen Roshi keeps repeating the same thing over and over again. (I’m beginning to realize that’s what teachers do.) In nearly every one of his weekly dharma talks he ends up reciting a set of instructions given to him by his teacher Maezumi Roshi in the early days of his training.

Wisdom teachings are fascinating things. They may not appear to be special. They are never complicated. They can sound so ordinary that we don’t even hear them or grant them consideration. But like seeds, they burrow into us and one day surface in full bloom. Only then are we ready to appreciate them. Here are Maezumi’s Three Teachings, which you’re not likely to find elsewhere. read more

the last chapter

August 5th, 2010    -    2 Comments

Last night I watched Georgia transform herself into a genie for a local kids theater performance of “Aladdin.” It was magic, I tell you, to see your baby girl grow up to be a genie who grants all your wishes with the shine of her smile. This morning, still reeling from the smoky potions, I remembered one of her lines, spoken to the wistful Aladdin who is wishing he could win the love of Jasmine by turning into a prince:

Al, all joking aside, you really oughtta be yourself.

And that reminded me of so much else, the whole of it, really, the beginning and the end, and so I spoke it out to share it with you here, the last chapter of Momma Zen. Listen and lose yourself in the story, the marvel, and then look up. See if you can’t crack a smile.

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a mother’s suitcase

August 3rd, 2010    -    4 Comments

First Stop:
Brookfield, Wisconsin, Sat., Aug. 21, 2-4 p.m. Extraordinary Ordinary workshop at YogAsylum. Register during these last 10 days of early bird savings.

Second Stop:
Boston, Mass., Sat., Sept. 18, 9-3:30 p.m. Mother’s Plunge retreat at Seaport Academy. Last 10 days of early bird savings.

Full Stop:
Los Angeles, Sun., Sept. 12 9-5, Beginner’s Meditation Retreat at Hazy Moon Zen Center. The best way to practice with me for real. Register here.

I’m home from a week’s retreat and unpacking my suitcase. My practice amounts to unpacking all the time, metaphorically and otherwise. Laundry piled and put away, refrigerator emptied and filled, mail opened and tossed before I’m off for warm pastures and waterfronts.

A letter waited on my kitchen table, and with it, this story unfolded. It’s the story packed in every mother’s suitcase. I hope you find yourself at home in it. read more

death by twitter

August 2nd, 2010    -    1 Comment

“Facebook is like a nosebleed. Twitter is like breathing into a paper bag.” Read more poetic license about our social ills in my first blog post at Smartly LA, a writers collective for “people who get it,” in which I confess how very much I still don’t get social media. “Like pointing to a Twinkie as the defense for murder.” Go there and tell the good doctor how you feel when you’re on a steady diet of social media. Oh, and follow me.

***

Only 2 more weeks of early bird registration for the Mother’s Plunge-Boston. For reals.

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