arrive

I woke up, naturally, at 7:20am. Whaaa?! I know. Meditated, ate breakfast, drank tea, and then drove my sweet self to the Tibetan Buddhist temple less than two miles away. I, along with five teenagers and one older man, sat in the temple and chanted and recited and sat and listened and maybe even slightly bowed a few times. I loved it. The lama was kind and helpful and generous. He even asked me when I first arrived if I was a teacher. My ego was successfully stroked! (I've got to keep that ego in check.)

Tibetan Buddhism, to me, is both beautiful and baffling, calming and cluttered. Dualism! That tricky bastard.

So when I first arrive--I have arrived. Ahhh... I feel a peace, an excitement, a drive to claim this as my home... Essentially to grasp on to an identity, a path.

By the end of the service, I am drowsy and have to pee. And how wonderful is that? It's genuinely wonderful--to go from a semi-fantasy world of projection and attachment to this world, here and now, this world that is full of droopy eyelids and incredibly small bladders.

But there's still a restlessness. There's still a longing for a consistent spiritual practice, one that I can dive into and dig deep. Maybe I'll always be a searcher. I think all of us are always searching, some just recognize it more than others--and some also have hang-ups about being a "chronic searcher." Am I speaking of myself? I just might be, which is interesting. It's interesting because I have always thought of myself as a proud "Not All Who Wander Are Lost" pin-wearing member, something with which I completely agree... just for other people and not for myself.

Why so much pressure on myself to find a permanent path? I know there's no such thing. It might boil down to my desire for stability. So be it.

So maybe I just find a path and stick with it? No spiritual traditions (aka religions) are "perfect," solely (pun?) because they are the creation of man, and man is fallible.

What I am trying to say is that I cannot expect to be in a blissed out state 24/7--probably not even for five minutes. There might be a 30 second window in any given day when one can feel "blissed out," but that's about it--and it's usually due to a perfectly ripe avocado or the sudden kick of caffeine when it enters the bloodstream. But then that's it.

Life resumes and the mundane dominates. This is fine, this is not worth trying to change. Enlightenment arises from the everyday activities that have become so "normal" that they are almost invisible, forgettable. Yet if we pay attention, if we lean in, we can begin to see the beginning-less universe in each tiny detail, in each seemingly insignificant event.

And this is our spiritual path: To notice the miracle in the moment.

Let the heart, mind, body, and soul wander. The wonders of the heavens are just waiting to be stumbled upon.