“‘A’ohe ‘ulu e loa’a i ka pokole o ka lou.
No breadfruit can be reached when the picking stick is too short.
There is no success without preparation.”
Ho'omakaukau - To Be Prepared.
To be prepared is an expectation I have for my serious hula students. For Hula, it can mean practicing your hula so you come to class prepared to show your mastery of the dance: knowing the steps and hand motions, translating Hawaiian into English, and understanding the meaning behind the movements. Then, telling the story with feeling is possible.
It takes repetition, again and again, for your body to learn the motions. Like riding a bicycle, once your body learns it, it embeds in muscle memory and one can dance more from the heart than the head.
In life, there are many ways to prepare. For example, how do you work with fear in troubled times? Fear is pervasive in our American culture. Last weekend in Chicago, 75 people were shot, 14 fatally, in weekend gun violence. Working with fear is important. Fear can sharpen our senses, or it can distort reality. I have been studying my fears for a long time. One way that I notice fear arises for me is when someone criticizes me. It especially hits me if I have a poor self-image and I’m unconsciously depending upon someone else’s approval to prop up my self-image.
Zenju Earthlyn Manuel has written a profound book called Opening to Darkness. For me, it’s a guide to working with fear, shame, and grief. Fear can arise of the dark, the unknown, and conflict. Zenju said in a wonderful talk at our Sunday Morning Zen recently, that you can look at fear as the mud that a lotus grows out of. We focus on being the lotus in the light and we’re happy when the mud is low and dry. When it gets high and thick, we just want to get out of it.
Can we see that the mud – the messiness of our life - is offering us rich lessons? Is it possible to hang out in the mud, stop wishing you were somewhere else, and just be? She says this isn’t a request to stay with what feels bad. It’s an invitation to see into darkness and transform negative feelings about our dark experiences and see the true nature of darkness – its harshness and its sweetness.
Ho’omakaukau. I think one can prepare for uncomfortable times with a regular practice of meditation – in whatever form you choose - to help stabilize and ground you. The practice of zazen can help you notice when you’re ruminating and let go of those thoughts, desires, and judgments. Zazen simultaneously opens you to not knowing and boundlessness. In Zen, we say we sit because we are already enlightened, not to get enlightened. True wisdom lives within each of us as it is a part of the whole universe.
The practice of letting go of thoughts may give us a glimpse of how we filter everything through the desires of our ego (me, mine, myself). The small sticky self, based on fear, only wants to protect itself. It’s a deeply engrained habit. Physical and mental safety are important. And is it also possible to see when our thoughts get in the way of the reality that all life is an interdependent whole and there is no separate self?
Breathe, smile, be kind to yourself and others. That’s Ho’omakaukau, a good practice of preparation.
Malama pono (Take good care of body, mind and heart),
June Kaililani Ryushin Tanoue
Kumu Hula, Roshi
P.S. Here is Osho Zenju Earthlyn Manuel's wonderful teisho on Opening to Darkness https://youtu.be/a6RDB-l1o-w.