“Today
Today I’m flying low and I’m
not saying a word.
I’m letting all of the voodoos of ambition
sleep.
The world goes on as it must,
the bees in the garden rumbling a little,
the fish leaping, the gnats getting eaten.
And so forth.
But I’m taking the day off.
Quiet as a feather.
I hardly move though really I’m traveling
a terrific distance.
Stillness. One of the doors
into the temple.”
A week and a half ago, when news of the coronavirus was just starting to heat up, I woke up from an early morning dream with this thought, “Your place is the storm’s center of the universe.” I’ve been sitting with this since then - not sure of its meaning. After last week of sitting in a silent mediation retreat, I’m a little clearer.
The storm’s eye is the eye of a hurricane where all is calm and peaceful. Yet it is right in the midst of dangerous, swirling, and destructive winds. Your place is where you belong yes like your home or our Zen center. But more than that, it’s the center in the midst of your being where no matter what, all is absolutely still and calm and grounded. It’s your hub of awareness, the very ground of being.
This ground of being is who we essentially are. We get so distracted and fragmented from it by our thoughts fueled by news and social media that we become top heavy — living in our heads. This causes stress and suffering.
The coronavirus has given many of us precious time. It’s time to reconnect to our whole selves. Now we can get back to basics: take good care of our physical bodies by resting, eating healthy, exercising and sleeping. And taking good care of our minds through meditation. Then we can nurture relationships with our family and friends.
Fear has an intelligence. We become more alert and mindful of where our hands are and what they touch. We notice our distance between people. We clean mindfully. That’s how we practice safety and prevention. Fearlessness comes from entering fear and bearing witness to it. It’s deep listening to how our body and mind are responding. Fear is always about loss.
So we notice our thoughts and give ourselves empathy with loving attention. We work to gently release our grip on the stories we tell ourselves that are not helpful. We practice returning to the body through the breath over and over again. This is mindfulness meditation that strengthens our hub of awareness and our frontal cortex that modulates our fear response and brings us back to emotional balance.
This place of deep calm abiding is our storm’s eye of the universe. This is our true home. It is who we are.
Malama pono (take care of body, mind and heart),
June Kaililani Tanoue, Kumu Hula/Sensei