C A R Y L U N A

each morning upon waking i embrace my dogs, we snuggle and kiss and enjoy the precious time allotted for such simple loving. we make our way down the stairs, i open the door to let them out, i also go to the bathroom. they come tumbling back in and we head to the kitchen. i feed them eggs, fried, each day. so i get the pan going, melt the butter. i crack the eggs and as they cook i go to the altars of my dearly departed father, and my dearly departed dog-cum-soulmate and light their candles. i boil water for tea. when their food is ready i set their bowls down and as they eat i unroll my blanket, place my meditation cushion down and light my own candle. i sit for a while, holding my very favorite cup filled with my very favorite tea and i stare into the candle.
really, it isn’t long before the thoughts come galloping in.
in these practices we are cued to pay attention to our breath, to follow it. the more i do it the more i think: this breath is the most fundamental collaboration i have with the world. all of the time i take the world in and all of the time i release myself into it. and all of the time, for as long as we know time, we do this together. we may be miles apart, but we are together. it’s not super spiritual, and it’s not meant to be inspiring, it just is. and i wonder if we need to be inspired anymore, i wonder what that even does for anyone. i wonder if it isn’t time to set that to the side, to loosen ourselves from the demands of ‘bliss’, ‘inspiration’, and the collar of having to follow it.
my small grief couples with the collective grief and it sits on the back of my ribs and feels painful. i want to ring it out, though no matter how i shift, how i stretch, it remains. right there, like a fist between my shoulder blades. isn’t that the thing, after all? the desire to change things? in the Lojong Teachings it is written that suffering is a combination of pain and the means we take to avoid it. when we stop avoiding it all we are left with is the pain.
i can only imagine i am not alone in my wish to just have that simple loving, that recognition of love right there in whatever kind of body it lives in, be it human or not. and really, we can each of us create or use whatever mantra helps us navigate the terrain of this life, but at the beginning and the end of the day i am reminded that there isn’t really anything else. and if there really isn’t anything else then it’s high time we wake up. it’s high time we take down the systems that hijack that simple loving by telling us who deserves it and who doesn’t. and if i can imagine that my love and the home i find in it is like your love and the home you find in it, then i know that my pain is your pain, my grief is also your grief, and the system that imprisons one is the system that imprisons all. but it isn’t enough to think this, we must each of us embody this.
can you feel your breath?
can you feel your body?
can you feel the breath of the earth, the body of the earth?
can you feel the breath of all who live on the earth, the body of all who live on the earth?
as you take breath in, can you take it all in?
as you release your breath, can you release yourself into the earth, into all who live on the earth?