Taking Heart
Two enormous and unexpected gifts come to me today. To try out a yoga class and get the feel of the meditation community, I walk 20 minutes to the Buddhist sangha address I find in the Lake Chapala Society newsletter. But there is no yoga today! Because the Pema Chodron “Online Immersive Retreat” which began just last night and continues through tomorrow, is about to start. So I spontaneously join the rest of the retreat ($20 for the weekend including catered lunch), and from 9AM to 3PM I am privileged to receive Pema’s teachings (via a large and perfectly positioned screen) from an intimate retreat video-recorded this year at her monastery in Nova Scotia.
Pema Chodron has been a special teacher for me ever since I read an early book of hers years ago, When Things Fall Apart. She is 80 years old now and today her teachings go straight to my deepest heart. Yesterday I was lonely here in my new country, longing for a bathtub and a comfortable chair, feeling lost. Today Pema reminds me to take heart, to enjoy (but not attach to) the smooth waves of my first days here, and to stay steady in the rough waves that inevitably follow in this ephemeral life. To use the loneliness and lostness as a seed of awakening compassion for all vulnerable beings, and in this way to connect with a shared humanity! I walk out at the end humbled and amazed that I have found my Buddhist community on only my third day in Ajijic.
Then the second enormous and unexpected gift comes. On my supposed way home, I stop at a lakeside restaurant; after sopa Azteca and a hibiscus drink, I decide to investigate a gathering I have spied from the restaurant patio. It’s a ceremony, about to begin, to support the Water Protectors in North Dakota! I spontaneously join in. For the next several hours I am part of another circle, a multicultural ritual circle in which each of the 50 people (including the children!) offer their personal spoken prayers and tobacco to the seven directions, on the shore of sacred Lake Chapala with white pelicans that winter here from North Dakota (!) flying overhead.
Why do I share these gifts with you? As encouragement for you to open your awareness to your own gifts, the ones to which your inner guidance system wants to lead you.
So beautiful, Susa. Thank you.
Oh wow Susa. Take heart, there has to be ‘down’ days or we wouldn’t appreciate the ‘up’ days, which become more and more as you find new people to share your life with. Luv ya. x
Gratitude is the key. How blessed to become so involved in such a short time. Good for you. Xox, Gayle
Should I make my exit plans now? Wow!
Wow E, Susa! and Bingo! This is quite a jackpot! Way to go, and thank you for sharing words and photos. I place you now, tho of course I have always placed you in my heart.
I am at our sleeping Mother’s bedside as I write this. Alzwell here, and I feel so good to know that it is good with you too.
Love you, Su Z.
Lin D.
Love you too Lin D
Big thumbs up.
i am thrilled to see these photos of solidarity with Standing Rock in a tiny place in Mexico! World-wide prayers have given us the small victory we see today, Dec. 5, in the fight against the “black snake.”
Signs that you’re on the right track…
Así es! Dice Thich Nhat Hahn que siempre hay el flujo de bendiciones, no mas que nosotros tenemos las paraguas abierto!