Skip to main content

A Moment in Autumn


As far as I can remember, “being in the moment” was a concept that was always around me. However, the abused child that I was could not remain in moments that were mortally painful. Thus, unconsciously I dissociated. I dissociated the pain, but I think my mind augmented beauty or joyful moments, like a drug, in order to anesthetize the repressed pain. Sometimes I felt outside of myself with joy. Sometimes I fell into unexplainable depressions.

In recent years I have become aware of my dissociation and the barriers it presents to “being in the moment”. So, I have tried take this recognition with me, and I attempt anew to find “being in the moment.”

It is September 30th, temperatures have been dropping. For weeks I have been pruning back my over-eager, ever-productive tomato plant, knowing that soon, when the nights freeze, it will die. I am leaving only the sprigs that have baby tomatoes on them the size of a pea or pearl, hoping for some October sunshine to help them develop.


As I did so today, I thanked the plant for its generosity. I felt sad thinking it will die. I thought of the cycle of life, of new tomato plants next spring. I thought of climate change and the destruction of species. I thought of the ‘next spring’ that I, one day, will not experience.

I thanked the plant, cut it, loved it, and thought how, as music students, we marveled at Mozart. What made the beauty of his music ineffable? I read it was due to his consciousness of nearing death in the midst of temporal beauty.

It doesn’t surprise me that we, as a society, repress thoughts of passing. The sadness of what we must leave is unbearable. We have removed rituals and awareness of the cycles of death and rebirth—often contained in religions—from our daily lives and provided no replacements. The ritual of thanksgiving has become a gluttonous blowout. We have covered up pain with noise and drugs and destruction.

I stand before my tomato plant without a clue as to how to reconnect to the cycle. I say gasshō, but that doesn’t ease my pain.

Is this the moment?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

About this blog

One of my earliest recollections as a child was seeing my father sitting on his Zafu meditating.  I also remember occasional discussions about Zen and meditation. As an adult, I would from time to time try to sit and meditate, or I would read about zen and meditation. But I didn’t know what I was doing, and the meditating didn’t seem to take me any further. It wasn’t until I was in my 40s that I was finally able to hook up with my own zazen practice.  Before long, it became one of the pillars of my life. My Zazen (sitting practice)  has varied over the years. At present I am meditating in the mornings. And I am once again reading Suzuki’s book, Zen Mind, Beginners Mind.  But I find that where I used to have many questions, I now have many comments or correctives. And I would like to retain these. So, I have decided to set up yet another social media website as a receptacle for my thoughts on this topic.
Post a Comment
Read more

Meditation and PTSD

In 1993, when my 'Christian phase' was over, I began an earnest engagement with Zen Buddhism. Over the years, in Germany and in France, I had gleaned information about meditation, mostly from books. By the time I returned to Stuttgart from Paris, I had obtained the name of Fumon Shōju Nakagawa , who was at the time official representative of the Soto Zen school in Europe. This was the school of Zen practice of my father and his family that I had grown up with. I also attended sesshins (retreats) with Roshis (masters) from the Rinzai school. But I found the insights I gained with the Soto Roshi most convincing, and so I remained with him. (In 2005 he performed our wedding ceremony .) During the sesshins, we kept silence for several days: For as long as the sesshin lasted we ate, worked, and meditated in silence with the exception of daily lectures and/or Q&A sessions with Roshi. Around this time I suffered acute temporary hearing loss due to professional stress and had beg
Post a Comment
Read more