JEONG KWAN

There is a nun in South Korea
who walked up the side of a mountain
to Baekyangsa temple, when she was
seventeen, and her mother had just died.

You have come here to live,
said the nun who opened the door,
not asking a question; just telling
a truth that had yet to manifest.

Jeong Kwan unpins her freshly
laundered robes and whispers them
around her shoulders. How old is she?
Only the mountain knows.

But the taengja tree outside her window
is 500 years old. Hardy orange, it still
bears fruit, and Kwan uses the sour juice
in her cooking.

She pickles lotus root three different ways,
then checks on jars of kimchi. She never
uses garlic, onions, scallions, chives, leeks.
Too distracting for a monk.

But soy?
Soy excites her.

Sometimes I agree with the world
that to be a mother is everything. Is the key
and the lock. Jeong Kwan vowed at seventeen
to not burden children with the pain of her death.

There is something in that,
for me.

We can't all choose to opt out
or the world would stop spinning
around humans. Bees might take over. Or
rats. Or better still, dust motes of light. Or dark.

Jeong Kwan unfurls petal after petal
of the lotus flower, soaking the skirt
in water. Later, she will pour the water
into a pot and you will want to gulp the tea

as though you are parched. You are parched
and this is the tea of enlightenment. The tea
that rings the bell of truth. Life can be this
way. An art. A craft. A discipline. A dance.

Three slices of lotus root, pickled
in an heirloom of soy sauce.

(c) Shaista Tayabali, 2017

Jeong Kwan is considered one of the finest chefs of this world by the finest chefs of this world, who are almost exclusively male. Life can be this way. Women can be this way. Happy Women's Day today and every day to all my friends and sisters, my mentors and teachers and heroes. We can be anything. We can do everything. Certainly, we can.

(Poem linked to Dverse Poets for Open Link Night) 

IT WILL PASS, WHATEVER IT IS

'This too shall pass',

my grandmother said,

over and over to me - 

There was always something

that needed comforting

in me.

Yesterday I glanced up

to find a hospital plaque

talking to me - 

'It will pass, whatever it is',

it said, and time looped back

to watch over me.

 © shaista, 2013

Today is the day the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. Today is also the 87th birthday of Vietnamese Zen monk and peace embodiment Thich Nhat Hanh. Martin Luther King Jr. strived to put forward Nhat Hanh's name for the Nobel prize in the 60's but time has moved far along from the Vietnam War, and the monk moves in much quieter waters now. 

Without his teachings in my life, my own peace struggle with pain, fear and anxiety would be a sad and terrible failure. The greatest of the lessons has been the simplest - to stay present and if fearlessness is available in the present moment, revel in it, trust it, be grateful for it. It passes. The gratitude and the pain. The fear and the remedy. It passes, whatever it is. For days I had stitches that had worked themselves into such positions that I could neither sleep nor breathe without the constant scratch scratch against the soft inner linings of my eye. I wrote to the surgeon with hope, and two days ago he kindly saw me, plucked out the offending irritants and trimmed others he saw might irritate me in time. Purple stitches they were, caught just in time - he was leaving for China that night to perform complex surgery on a train. Lucky travelling patients, lucky me. Perhaps they don't need prizes and awards, the heroes of our world. They just need to exist. And practice.

images: The Mag

Palestine Rose

Teasips

GRACE

In this fading light
while the crickets sing,

A chant rings out
aboriginal, whole -

Keeping tune with the rhythm
of the humming gong -

Of the bell that brings me
home.


© Shaista Tayabali
Bergerac, 2012

How can it be that I have gone and come? I left on my in breath, and I have arrived on my out breath. How can it be that only this morning I was on Plum Village soil and whisking my skirt along with a frisky French white butterfly, and now I step into the doorway of my little house in the garden and a white butterfly pranced around at my feet, flirting outrageously near my cheek before sidling off to you. Watch out for him!

The girl that I was belongs to ether now. In her place, something firm has grown roots and spread branches, from which fall green curtains of mists and memories.

So much to share. Will it suffice to say it was perfect, from the first person I met waiting outside the airport with the name Padma, meaning Lotus? To emphasise the depth of her name, a tattoo of a lotus adorned her right foot. My beautiful blue room was named Mulberry, and had a hot water shower! The unexpected thrill! The loveliest of roommates, from Israel, Canada and Romania, and the heartbeat of compassion that wove its thread around every one of the thousand retreatants.

I have arrived. I am home. But from the moment I arrived in Plum Village I was home too. Some of the time I was sick, but I was tended to carefully by strangers who were not strangers. A cup of hot tea in the morning, made by a loving new friend while you are still snuggled under the duvet - now tell me, does it get better than that?!

VILLAGE DES PRUNIERS

For seven years I have dreamed about and visualised walking among the plum trees with Thich Nhat Hanh in his exiled home of France. I cannot believe I am actually about to make this dream come true. In a few hours I hope to board a plane that will take me to Bergerac airport and thence, onwards, to the monastic settlement in Plum Village.

We returned home late tonight from Gloucester where we said our final goodbyes to Aunty Saida. One final flurry of activity awaits before the pace of my life changes beyond all recognition. Everything I do will be in mindfulness harnessed by good, strong, clear energy, and when I eat, I will chew at least thirty times, like my grandfather taught us when we were little (and we never listened! There were games to be played! Comics to be read! Who had time to chew?).

Now I will chew. Think of me, as I will be thinking of you.

Catching the Flower

The flower wants
to be seen
for a while


Because the flower
knows
she will die. 


I wrote these lines while sitting with Thay Thich Nhat Hanh, and wishing for his eyes to fall on me, and acknowledge my presence. All things are impermanent but occasionally, when a dream is coming true, you want it to be perfect. And it was - twice I sat in the front row during the dharma talks, and Thay, who speaks softly, asked us to come closer, sit closer. We obliged with great alacrity! I could not believe my good fortune. Right beneath the Zen Master's feet! If he had thrown the flower, I would have caught it. Except he wouldn't throw a flower.

I am home now, and everything looks even more beautiful, more vividly clear, after six days of mindfulness energy harnessed by nearly 900 Buddhas-to-be. The young monastics, who are all charming and savvy, joked that they have no Indian nuns as yet. There is a space available for me... What do you think? I wonder what sort of nun I would make. Hopeless, probably. I'd be like Maria in The Sound of Music - always on her knees in confession for something or other!

She climbs a tree
And scrapes a knee
her dress has got a tear;
She waltzes on her way to Mass
and whistles on the stair;
And underneath her wimpole
she has curlers in her hair -

I've even heard her singing in the Abbey!
How do you solve a problem like Shaista-a-a??

Warrior Poet, Warrior Nuns

Yesterday, I walked with seven young nuns and monks from Plum Village, Thenac, France. We met at Clare College, in the Latimer Room. Birds chirped and students crunched outside on gravel, as we practised peace, and sang songs of breathing, freedom and freshness. This is the very first UK Wake Up tour organised by the young novices, some of whom were students at Cambridge themselves, and had direct experience of struggling with mounting stress and anxiety of exams and future careers. This trip is holiday and work experience for the young monastics - I could see the bouncing energy in their spirit. I couldn't stop grinning - they looked so happy! Practising walking meditation down past the yellow daffodils and the blue scilla, we painted quite a picture I imagine :) Not a single person walked past us without acknowledging in some way the quiet mindful procession. And I like to think some waves of peace radiated through the colleges, and into the souls of panicked students and grim professors.

still, from the Keats' biopic 'Bright Star'

When I was 17, I had the most delightful interview at Newnham College, to read English. I breezed into the room, and immediately fell in love with the view across the lawns. I think the Head of Department and Head Lecturer were thoroughly amused. I had only lived in England for two years, so it was quite dreamy to have a conversation about the poetry and literature that was, and had been inspiring my soul for years. I remember raving about the romantic soul of Keats in particular. Love and death, I cried ecstatically! Poetry is always about love and death!

Following my diagnosis, I deferred my admission, but at 19, when I faced the Admissions Tutor again, she 'suggested' that with an illness like lupus, I would never cope with the stress of Cambridge academic life. She quoted the suicide rates to me. I was a shivering, quivering mass in that office, not knowing how to fight my case. I did not know enough about the animal raging through me to defend my ability to cope. What struck the final blow to my confidence, was learning that the English lecturer who had interviewed me, had lupus herself, and instead of supporting my case, had done exactly the opposite. "You'll never cope at Cambridge, with Lupus" resounded in my ears, on and on, through the years that followed. I re-applied again at 23, for my Masters, but the day before the deadline, I cancelled my application.
 
I have only recently forgiven myself for that action. Or maybe I haven't completely forgiven myself. All I know is, that yesterday, in sitting and walking meditation, something healed itself inside me. The warrior poet walked with the warrior nuns, and the ghosts of my past ran for it, far, far away from me.

images: assortment from my own, flickr and theblogpaper

Telephone Meditation

I am awaiting The Call from the Consultant again... it is 1:57pm, the call was due at 1:30pm. Not that I expected it at the correct minute, but you know how you have to be ready anyway? Like an athlete at the starting point, knees bent, ears cocked, heart racing with unnatural levels of adrenaline.

1:58pm... breathing in, breathing out... am knitting two blue stripes into a hat for my nephew, also awaiting the get-set-ready signal to jump out of his heavily pregnant momma... my fingertips are frozen, and I am wearing fingerless gloves as I type...

3:14pm... am writing a potted history about my life, pets, hobbies and favourite telly shows for the radio chat room... (small whoop of joy)..

Venerable monk Thich Nhat Hanh teaches this mindfulness practise for the telephone...
When you hear the telephone ringing you can consider it to be the sound of the mindfulness bell. Every time you hear the telephone ringing you stay exactly where you are. You breathe in and breathe out and enjoy your breathing. Listen, listen - this wonderful sound brings you back to your true home. Then when you hear the second ring you stand up and you go to the telephone, with dignity! That means in the style of walking meditation. You know that you can afford to do that, because if the other person has something really important to tell you, she will not hang up before the third ring. That is what we call telephone meditation. We use the sound as the bell of mindfulness.

6:37pm... I waited three rings. And it was a good conversation. My consultant said she had spent several hours going over my old records, and realised herself just how beneficial this treatment would be for me. She even asked me to participate in reviewing a grant application she has been working on.
Success! High five!

7:30pm... I went to see 'Fiddler on the Roof' performed by the local youth centre drama group.

L'chaim!! To Life!

photo by Traczewska, from Trek Earth

Eye Meditate

Trying to meditate

while we wait,

sardines packed straight

at the eye clinic station

My nerve ends hum

with others' emotions

I breathe in fear

and breathe out tension.

Conversations

start, and stall

desultorily

Veterans meet

and greet

ostentatiously,

"Doris! Over 'ere!"

"Audrey! It's you!

What're you doin' 'ere?"

"Same's you, I expect.

Me eyes, but,

Fancy meetin' you 'ere."

Daylight melts

to a grim fluorescence.

Names are called,

pupils dilate.

We wait.

I continue

to try

to meditate.

This piece is dedicated to Keith Martin, my surgeon, my hero. When my name was finally called and while Keith gazed suspiciously into my foggy dyed eyes, he tossed a small nugget of joy across the tonometer... "I've been reading your prolific blog and I'm impressed." Woo hoo!!!! If only it were de rigeur to fist bump your eminent surgeon. Instead I settle for a demure, "Well, so long as you weren't bored"... while inside I am all glee. Le fruit de la meditation, peut-etre?