Why is the practice of equanimity so hard? I was trying to answer the question in my handout from the "One Year to Live" class which said:  What attitude or state of mind do you wish to cultivate and live with daily?  I jumped on this one, sure that I had a response worth pondering.  Yes, I want to bring about steadiness of mind and equanimity as I travel through these last chapters of my life.  It was clear to me as I began to reflect that this was not something that would just come to me in some grand insight and remain with me forever.  No, it was something I had to turn my attention to every day as I faced a vast array of experiences.  Of the four brahma viharas in Buddhism it is thought to be the hardest.  It does all come back to love in the end, but that is a complex story...

So what is this challenging state of mind?  It is the acceptance of the continual arising and passing away of phenomena, and these phenomena can be as small as a headache or as giant as the threat of nuclear annihilation.  It could be facing a broken heart or being disappointed that your favorite eatery no longer serves clam chowder!  Both joy and sadness are impermanent.

The longer I live the more I realize that I - and the rest of my fellow human beings - have little control over much of what occurs around us.  Yes, we can smile at a passerby on the street, give a gift to a friend, or make a beautiful meal for our family, but in the end we cannot really change the trajectory of other people's lives, and we cannot alter what they think or how they feel.  It is hard enough to change some of our own thought patterns that are unhealthy, like obsessive self criticism or a phobia about riding in elevators, let alone trying to change someone else's emotional or intellectual state.  We can go to the polls and vote for candidates we approve of and whose values we share, but anyone who looks at the political narrative over recent decades knows that we often don't see our own vision or dreams being fulfilled by those we have chosen.

Equanimity can be painful at times ... when we see our values being trashed by those we trusted to take care of our society, when we wake up day after day feeling the weight of our life winding down, when we say we're sorry to someone and know that the hurt still remains in their heart, when we face our occasional failure to live by our own values, when we look out at the ocean and feel the heart hurting for a very old loss, or when accept our physical limitations ...  The pain arises because we cannot act, we must allow it all, and because as humans we carry an innate inclination to make things better, to heal wounds, to bring a smile to a sad face.

When my youngest daughter was a little girl she used to remind me that I helped her bad dreams go away, and when she said this my heart went all warm and mushy and I felt she had paid me some ultimate tribute.  I had the capacity to drive away the darkness.  Or did I?  I think I simply witnessed her fears and put my hands on her and the nightmares eventually floated off into space.  There's something fairytale-ish about this, and it reminds me of the profound burden of motherhood: the job we take on of making things better.  And this is where love comes in.  We hang in there with love, and often we can help the pain of another recede.  But sometimes we can't...

Our lives have become more complicated, we live in a fragmented, techno-driven culture where closeness and trust and intimacy are more and more of a challenge, and  dishonesty and greed seem to be standard qualities that people manifest. This simple direct touching of one another with love and bringing about comfort seems harder and harder to come by.  That doesn't mean that we give up.  We have to continue to extend ourselves with love and compassion, even as we sit with all that we cannot change and practice equanimity.

Because love is who we are.  No matter what.  And we can't weather the storms ahead with out it.

Source: What I Just Learned from Miranda

Stephen Levine wrote a visionary work called A Year to Live in which he reflected among other things on the preciousness of human life and the importance of rededicating ourselves – each of us – to our own journey.  What he’s really talking about is taking the time to see clearly the priorities for one’s life.  What is deeply important?  What does it all mean?  Despite the inherent uncertainty that the human journey holds, we do have choices for how to be in the world, how to speak, treat our fellow citizens, how to hold ourselves in times of great challenge, how to be agents for the good.

I want to imagine the finite amount of time I have left, and explore just how I wish to navigate this uncertain terrain.  What thoughts and visions will I put my mind to, what choices will I make, how will I care for myself and others, how will I manifest my truth?   Here are the aspirations that rise to the surface:

PEACE  – If there’s one thing I know for certain, it’s that I want to live in peace, in harmony with my universe.  I’m sure studies have been done proving that it’s much healthier in the long run to be surrounded by those who live peacefully, but for me it’s about knowing this in a very direct and intimate way in my body. When I sit quietly and listen to my breath, feel my body’s ease, I know there is little else to be done, that I am complete, just me and my loving heart…  Cultivating inner peace helps us spread it out into the world, as the Dalai Lama has said many times.  First you must discover and nurture it for yourself.  You must bless yourself with peace.

HONESTY –   I was born on George Washington’s birthday and those of us who remember old legend learned that our first president was reputedly incapable of telling a lie.  I carried that aspiration a lot of my life, though there were challenging times when I forgot how to be brave enough to tell the truth.  I now feel passionate about truth.  About seeing and telling the things as they are.  There’s a lightness, a clarity, a spaciousness when you are speaking honestly … no skeletons in closets, no ghosts lurking around the corner.  Here’s what I really think about truth:  it makes us more who we really are.  I have been writing much in my life to locate and own this very truth.

SERVICE – To offer ourselves —  help, support, gifts, words, actions — to others is the path toward healing in our now injured society.  When we offer a hand, we move from our self-referenced consciousness to forging community with others, to understanding fully the rich, complicated world we live in, and playing an active part in that world.  I have sat with the dying, coached young high school students in writing, served lunch to the homeless … and in each of these instances I became more vitally a part of my world, and saw at the same time an expanding of the heart, ever so quiet and subtle, as this happened.  The Buddha saw service as one of the significant paths to an enlightened life, and I get it.

BEAUTY –  I can’t help it – All my life I was trained to love beauty in many different forms:  art in Italy, music at the piano, great food at the dining room table, inspiring literature in all the books on all those bookshelves.  I had a life of privilege and that included the tasting and falling in love with that which is beautiful.  These were the rich vibrant colored threads that were woven into my life’s tapestry…  To look at a great painting or listen to a Bach Fugue isn’t just a “beautiful” experience, but rather a reminder of man’s infinite capacity to create and galvanize those of us who witness into action and creativity.  Art in all its forms is like a marvelous glue that binds the varying characters in society, as it tells its own story and becomes our history.    Art creates community and can become a message for change.

ANIMAL LIFE – I have grown up around four legged creatures, and have for as long as I can remember felt an affinity with them:  dogs, cats, birds, and elephants in particular.  They all are teachers.  They show us intelligence, the power of instinct, they show us how a family is raised, and how affection can be communicated.  They manifest magic, as in the soaring birds that lift us off this earth as they rise into the sky.  They remind us of mystery – very important.  We need to make room for mystery…  They also remind us that we ourselves are animals, and that gift is priceless.  Taking on a little humility in this way helps us be part of the whole as opposed to remaining an observer.  I have imagined myself in all these forms, and it brings love and laughter into my heart to do so.  And who doesn’t need love and laughter?

FAMILY – What can I can about this except that the children and grandchildren that I have watched grow for these many years have perhaps been my greatest teachers.  And how we need teachers to guide us along the path! …  Teachers keep us honest, they inspire, they remind us of our own unique gifts.  The older I get, the more humbled I feel as I realize I am still learning from these dear ones.  They bring joy and and love.

I will rest here for now, and contemplate these particular marvels in my life.  These beautiful gifts have colored the landscape of my life in wondrous ways, each of them inexorably tied to my heart through the power of love.  Yes, it really does all boil down to love in the end, doesn’t it?

Seventy two years ago, I was born in Miami Beach, Florida to my young, ill-suited parents. It was the last year of Word War II, and from what I've heard I seemed to be the gift that made everyone feel hopeful about their marriage.  I was cheerful, curly haired, and according to all who knew me then, very well behaved.  As I study the photos of this cherubic child whom I don't recognize, I can't help but feel a certain wonder at the gift of a life.  I have lived long enough to know that it's been a complicated and rich ride.  And today, the day after my birthday, I want to take a look back at the landscape that I have traveled all these years.  Old age is a time to go inside, isn't it, a time to ponder and reflect, and I'm of a mood to consider this vast landscape, and feel the wonder of having lived this long. Aaron Sorkin, the brilliant writer, said recently:  "the most powerful delivery system for an idea is a story."  I love this.  I'm going to offer an abbreviated "story" of the journey this country and I have been on these many decades, and try to understand the arc of her narrative.

In the early days of my life, when my mother went to art school and my father practiced accounting, dressing up in a grey flannel suit and trundling off to his office, there was a great deal of good will in our suburban community across the bay from San Francisco, and indeed in the rest of the country.  This was the comfortable, post World War II fifties in America. I had a best friend called Boo who lived next door.  My father built a playhouse and he and I created great scenarios together in that playhouse.  People had jolly parties in their backyards, played jazz on their record players, didn't lock their doors, and it was safe to walk to school.  My mother joined the Socialist Party along with some of her artist friends, and spoke up for those who would protest our conservative Republican president.  They were Bohemians with strong opinions and needed to express themselves, but they weren't really outraged or angry or alienated -- yet.

I spent three years of my childhood in Italy, and fancied myself an expatriate.  Again, there was a carefree, spacious sense of our world.  In the late 50's Elvis Presley was a phenomenon worldwide, and went off to become a soldier and hero to the American public. We loved our symbols of patriotism then.   I believe we were a patriotic country, though for myself I chose an alternative path: the skeptic. I wasn't sure because I saw the swagger of those I knew in the military and foreign service.  I saw an inflated sense of importance on the part of Americans who visited abroad, and was repelled by it.  But what I didn't see, because I lived away from this country, was the continuing struggle of the black people to gain a foothold in our culture.  Over decades, as they fled the South and moved north and west seeking opportunities and freedom, they were met with an entrenched racism.  But, I was living far away, and I didn't know this.  Racism sadly lived on.

Returning to America was fraught with difficulty for me, for the failure of a beautiful romance with a Sicilian boy 6 years older than myself, and because I was caught in the crazy restlessness of my mother's trajectory.  We moved to New York, where I finished high school, and we watched in wonder as John Fitzgerald Kennedy beat Richard Nixon for the presidency.  Again, liberalism and hope -- and relative prosperity -- were in the air.  This young Irish Catholic was a visionary, and he had us looking to outer space and dreaming about what we could give our country ("ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country").  I think we all fell in love with this man, only to have our hearts broken when he was assassinated.

In 1963 when Kennedy was shot by Lee Harvey Oswald, our entire world changed. We no longer felt safe.

In 1965 two years later, my world changed.  I got married and had my first child.  And though I had no model to guide me, I had to figure out how to create safety for my daughter...

The United States swarmed with anti-Vietnam protesting in the late 60's as we watched our government wage a war that couldn't be won, with the sacrificing of thousands upon thousands of young lives, and the burning up of a small southeast Asian country.  I didn't march with the protesters, but I watched every moment of it from my suburban home.  I saw a huge upwelling of energy, the voices of the young and those on the left shouting "no more war."  If the landscape of this country was a swath of fabric, we saw it ripped and torn to shreds during those years.  The war ended finally, perhaps hastened by all the passionate protest, and our crooked president resigned, but the wounds of discord and distrust and fear remained ... We carry those wounds still as a country.

We lost two powerful voices for justice in 1968, the year my second daughter was born:  Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy.  Our wounds became deeper ones.  We were witnessing an unraveling of civility and order, and we were afraid.

We moved to the suburbs to raise a family -- too many drug deals gone bad in our San Francisco neighborhood... The joyous consuming of drugs that seemed benign during the Summer of Love in the late 60's gradually grew into a culture of alienation with young kids sniffing glue on the sidewalk and Hells Angels shooting up things when the going got rough.  In the late 70's I returned to college to complete my education, find my way.  The more confounding my world became, with the economic disparity and greed that the Reagan era offered up, the more I hunkered down to find myself.  And in finding myself, I eventually saw the road leading away from marriage and family.

I taught college English, I left my marriage, I moved to the wild and rugged landscape of Northern New Mexico with an unreliable partner.  Despite my education and my success with teaching, the center wasn't "holding" and I just kept on moving and searching.  Meanwhile our government, having devastated Vietnam and Cambodia, continued a campaign of warfare and exploitation, and more and more American men died in far away places.  And many more innocent civilians with dark skin perished.  Afghanistan and later Iraq come to mind. Greed, aversion, and dishonesty seemed to drive this country's efforts as the economy gradually bled out from all the warfare, and the middle class and the poor saw their options shrink.  I watched the news and struggled to wrap my mind around the insanity.  I felt disconnected from my country, sensed a climate of fear spreading far and wide...

When I found mindfulness practice in the mid 90's, I had some degree of relief.  I saw that, Yes, misfortune and pain in this life are inevitable, and yes we have choices for how to deal with suffering, and yes, we have choices for how to live in this complicated world.  We can choose compassion and understanding instead of aversion and ignorance.  And so a beautiful portal opened, and I walked through it.  Ah ... I remember feeling ... this makes so much sense.   I might not be able to fathom or do much about what was going on in Washington DC, but I could embrace my immediate world with kindness and mindfulness, and thus lighten my psychic load.  My mind was able to relax and expand and I could allow all that was going on to be present.  I gradually found a way to be present for my self, who I really was.  And as I discovered some portion of ease, the country experienced a new prosperity under a young president from Arkansas, whose mind was brilliant and whose character was flawed.

I wouldn't be writing this if I hadn't walked through that door, and for this I'm grateful beyond measure.  And there is a great deal more that I'm grateful for:  my beautiful children, grandchildren, my dog and cats, my peaceful little home(s), my stunning city, my loyal and true friends, my mind which is still perking, the beauty of the ocean and the birds, the sounds of my piano, and the wisdom of my grandmother which endures inside me ... and so much more.

The trajectory or arc of this life feels vast and it is all moving quickly now ... it sprung from a relatively peaceful time with our people sensing they were in a good and safe place;   it has roller coastered through perilous ups and downs, through bright light and darkness, with a sense of safety and wellbeing becoming more and more diminished.  How quickly the landscape changed from relative comfort to the reign of George W. Bush and Cheney and our cruel campaign in Iraq.   Nothing stays the same ... just check the Buddha's teachings. In 2017, it feels that we're on an acid trip with a president who's often unhinged, every single thing changing moment by moment, the ground below shaky, and we worry too much about being safe.

In order to summon I hope, I remember Pablo Neruda's profound line which says, "You can cut all the flowers, but you cannot stop the Spring."  Change that moves in the direction of good will and harmony and safety is possible.  And human beings all have beating hearts they can listen to.  We can stand up for the abused and invisible, we can fight for justice on all fronts, and forge community.  When I marched in Washington this January, I felt a return to that sense of hope and good will that colored my young life, and I was refreshed and exhilarated.  Yes, I thought, yes.

The arc of my life, of this country's life, continues to swirl inexorably and mysteriously into the future, and we who are on this ride must pay attention, give all that we can, and love one another.

I have been thinking about just why the immigration ban so haphazardly inflicted on our people hit me so deeply and made me terribly sad.  As I ponder, I see that I'm still in mourning for the country's values I took for granted, and I feel a swelling of compassion in my heart for all those who wish to come here to make good, safe, civilized lives for themselves. I have thought about it in a number of ways:  the United States is a country composed of immigrants, they  are the fabric of our society, this nation was built on noble principles of life, liberty, equality, and the pursuit of happiness, we are a culture of huge advantage and privilege and as such have a responsibility to those who have nothing, to those who being decimated by radicals operating out of hatred and ignorance, many of us can remember the voices of visionaries such as Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, JFK, Barack Obama, and even now Elizabeth Warren, ringing in our heads, all urging us to stand up for justice and equality for all our fellow citizens.

A Buddhist teaching I heard a long time ago said that fear is all about the future.  So, it would stand to reason that when we operate from fear -- and that is certainly what this regime hopes for --  we cannot be present for the dire problems of the present in this country:  poverty, hunger, violence, inner city racism, and economic inequality, just to name a few.  And if we operate from fear, we can never feel safe.  The man who got himself elected in November has waved the dark banner of fear in front of the American people and many have fallen for it.  And in falling for it, they of course condone his irrational executive order to bar immigrants of a certain color and certain faith from this country.  As he whips up fear in our population, he gathers his loyal following in and encases them in his cause, while at the same time going on to betray them in his choices of unqualified, self-serving advisors.  This is brainwashing -- cruel and perverse -- and it has been used before in history to abhorrent ends, blinding the faithful to the dark reality of his purpose.

This man's purpose, it seems, is not to govern wisely and humanely, but to "strut his stuff upon the stage," holding his position at the center of the chaos he has created and never, ever admitting that he has a conscience.  He knows nothing of governing or history, he has no respect for the rule of law, and he is quickly finding out that governing a complex country is a whole lot more challenging than running a business!

I want now to bless the judicial system who so far have been the clearest voice of reason in this circus of chaos, and have bravely articulated the values of our democratic system.  Maybe I will rest easier tonight and other nights knowing that those who have taken on the job of weighing and judging will persevere in their work without interference.   This country desperately needs the safety and the equilibrium that justice can offer.  We need this, and so does the rest of the world.

I woke up this morning to read that a number of immigrants traveling to this country are now being held in detention here or are forbidden to travel. The news that these earnest, hard-working Muslims from Iraq, Iran, and Syria will not be able to enter the U.S. feels like one of my worst visions come true. Yes, that man (don’t want to name him) ranted and raved on the campaign trail about closing our borders and keeping out the foreigners, especially the Muslims and the Mexicans whom he claimed were fiercely and inherently dangerous. But, I didn’t/I couldn’t believe that as the president he would go through with such a bigoted and cruel decision. Since he became president he has been acting like an absolute monarch, signing proclamation after proclamation, and I assumed that most of those wouldn’t come about without the help of the congress. Guess I was wrong. Our democratic system does allows for a president to make sweeping decisions in dire times, but I’m sure the Founding Fathers could not have had a clue what that would mean in the hands of an unstable, mean spirited person.

It breaks my heart to think of people who have fled their country, having endured countless cruelties and injustices, coming to seek refuge in America and being told they can’t come in. I have always believed that this country stood up for justice and humanitarian action. And this nation has harbored immigrants since the very beginning of its history, some with white skin, some with black or brown skin… Over time we would become a multi-colored population. On the Statue of Liberty travelers see these words: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free …. ” We are a country built on and enhanced by immigrant energy, we are a vast ethnic quilt of humankind. But then, the man in the White House doesn’t read, doesn’t know history, and has lived his whole life in a bubble. He is tragically ignorant. And he is loaded with fear that he wants our citizens to share. When I think of the vast power of fear over living beings, I become terrified myself. It is primal, irrational, and brings us deep into our primitive mammalian selves, where there is no reasoning and no heart.

Build a wall! Close the door! Keep the bad guys out! …. especially those with darker skin and strange customs … Mexicans who trade in drugs but also come here to work harder for their families than the white folks. And those dark eyed folks from Muslim countries who look so different, have complicated names and wear burkas, and who are deeply spiritual, praying daily to Mohammed. Without discrimination or thought of any kind, our government now chooses to exclude those who are deemed alien, and a threat. Tragic, because there is no coherent thought process happening here. Just raw fear. And the unstable monarch…

These are really complicated times. It is true that we have been harmed by people proclaiming their allegiance to Islam. We are despised by many in that part of the world, and that historical contempt is also complicated. It is also painful to contemplate. It is essential that rational good minds prevail and sort out how we serve grave humanitarian needs while still protecting our country from terrorism. There are good minds out there who have been on that mission, I know there are. Many of those minds were hard at work in Washington during Barack Obama’s tenure. At this moment, however, it feels as though the good and sane minds are not in control, and we are careening through time and space, yanked this way and that by a man who is driven by racism and ill-will.

I want to say those who had the door slammed in their face in New York and elsewhere (I must name them: Hameed Khalid Darweesh, unnamed family of 6 from Syria, Seyed Soheil, Saeedi Saravi, Haider Sameer Abdulkhalek Alshawi, Ali Abdi, 6 unnamed Iraqis coming from Egypt) that this is NOT the true America. This is not the America built on the principles of all men deserving life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, the America where there are laws which forbid discrimination based on race, religion, and gender. Our government was founded on humane and righteous principles, but today a vast number of our citizens who voted in the man in White House have no clue about just how sacred these principles are. They are driven by fear of all that is different. Those of us who cherish these principles now weep and grieve for the shameful acts of our government. I want you who tried to enter the country to know that there are millions of us in the United States who want to welcome you to this amazing place where opportunities are bountiful, the diversity of culture is rich, and the power of community can still get things done. I believe there will be consequences here and now for this horrible decision. I marched in peaceful protest with 500,000 women in Washington a week ago and got a taste of the power of our democracy, our solidarity and our shared values. It brought tears to my eyes to realize that we can be a government OF the people, FOR the people, BY the people — even if at this moment that seems to be a sham. I promise my determination to speak out in all ways about this hateful exclusion of our fellow beings, and I know there are many, many thousands who are behind me in this. I humbly offer my apologies for this government, I promise never to forget you and your families’ inalienable right to come here and join this amazing experiment in democracy.