October 30, 2010 Day of the Dead: Buddhist Style led by Peggy Rowe Ward aka A Day of Mindfulness hosted by Organic Garden Sangha

 Dharmacharya Peggy Rowe received Lamp Transmission from Thich Nhat Hanh in 2000, 

and has a Doctorate in Adult Education and a Master’s in Counseling Psychology.  

She has also studied and practiced with many wise Native American elders. 

The day begins in silence. We meet in a Quaker Meeting House and arrange ourselves on mats and cushions and chairs in a semi-circle facing an altar - a table covered with a colorful cloth - on which we are encouraged to place photographs of our beloved dead. Pictures of mothers, fathers, grandmothers and great grandmothers, and dogs join Martin Luther King and Mother Theresa and the Virgin Mary, Thich Nhat Hanh, the Buddha and other spiritual heavyweights. I am early and choose my place at the front of the semicircle and close my eyes. When next I open them, there are about thirty people in the room, seated quietly, already meditating. So we continue like that for a while, until Peggy strikes a big bowl and says, "Be aware you are breathing in" and then a small bell, the sign to stretch our legs. We stand and introduce ourselves, saying our name and the ancestors we have brought with us today. Peggy urges us to name them: "they like to hear their names." There are many mothers and fathers, a great grandmother, a smattering of grandmothers. Many foreign names, Japanese, Turkish, German, Russian. A man says quietly of his parents, "I called them Momma and Poppy." The atmosphere gets heavier and heavier as we go around the room.

We sit down again and Peggy tells us not to get stuck in grief. "Let it flow through you, keep coming back to the breath. See if you can follow your breath all the way in, all the way out. Below the grief, you may find other remembrances - which is not the same as nostalgia. Remembering is felt in the body." She tells us, "Be alert to who appears today: it may not be who you think." 

A young girl standing near Peggy adds, "I think we have some tricksters here today!"

Both of these sits are effortless, physically. Nothing hurts, not my knees or back or any part of the body: how rare to note what isn't there, for a change! There are no clocks in this quiet room, and no watches that I can see, so I have no idea how long we sit. It is so peaceful. The two bells sound and we stand and put on our shoes. We are going to do a walking meditation to a little park down the road. First we sing a few songs, which everyone knows except me. Then Peggy instructs us to walk as if the ground were sealing wax, and our foot a seal. The object is to step as carefully as possible to make a clear imprint of our foot. She tells us we can hold hands if we want to. We don't have to, "but it's nice." And off we go, a slow silent caterpillar of humanity. The people in front of me are holding hands. I glance next to me and see a woman's hand hanging free, so I reach over and give it a squeeze. She immediately turns with a "Oh! Hello!" But I just smile down at the ground. I don't want to put on my social face, I just want to feel what it's like to hold hands with a stranger while walking to the park. I like it so much that when another person heaves into view on the other side of me, also unattached, I reach out and take her hand too. Now there is simply a sensation of warm hands and mindful feet and knowing breath. The woman on my right sighs deeply and her sigh travels through me somehow and I sigh too. We hold hands down two blocks, while waiting for two traffic lights and all the way into the park. The sounds of the city ebb and flow, cars mostly, mothers calling their children, a baby crying, a child laughing, someone playing drums. The sounds are just that: sound, as hypnotic as the ocean. 

When we reach the park, we string ourselves along a low wall or on the ground, close our eyes and meditate. Since introducing myself, and saying I brought my mother today, I haven't said a word. Now I feel the sun on my face, the stone wall cool from the earlier rain under my backside, the woman next to me unselfconsciously leaning her thigh against mine, as casually as a child. I smile: I feel like a child. Life is uncomplicated and safe and good. The tiny bell rings: time to stand. I experiment on the way back. I purposely don't take anybody's hand in order to compare. I feel ... singular. Much more aware of my separate 'self'. I miss the hand holding and the blurred boundaries. Now I know.

Back at the Quaker House, we hold hands in a circle in the driveway. Peggy instructs us in her father's prayer: "Squeeze and pass!" and the squeezed hands flash like lightning around the circle in both directions twice. Then we do her father's universal grace: "YUM!" (intoned like Ohm, but happily). We can't help but smile. We are instructed to eat slowly bearing in mind the five contemplations:

This food is the gift of the whole universe - the earth, the sky, and much hard work.

May we live in a way that makes us worthy to receive it.

May we transform our unskillful states of mind and learn to eat with moderation.

May we take only foods that nourish us and prevent illness.

We accept this food so that we may practice the path of understanding and love.

-- Thich Nhat Hanh

Peggy says if, in spite of our best efforts to slow down, we still 'woof' our food down, the next thing on the agenda is nap-time. This is my kind of retreat! Eating slowly and in silence, I end up playing with my food as I always do during the All Day silent retreats. I count my baby tomatoes; I count the seeds I can see in my bread; I break my banana into bits and sit them on the peel, little men on a raft. Their fuzzy insides look like shag carpeting. It occurs to me that children play with their food because they don't have a treasure house of thoughts or memories or facts to get lost in. So they have to improvise with what's at hand.

Into these musings a tiny feather, a baby bird feather, blows straight across the table and into my peanut butter sandwich. After my peacock experience on the retreat, I am alert to all things avian. I look around. I don't see a single other feather around. That this one came straight to me I take as a sign.  But of what? Or who? I remember my cousin Brigitte, who died of breast cancer maybe twenty years ago now. She hated birds - could it be her? As her name crosses my mind (and really, this happens so fast), I hear a voice clear as a bell in my head, "Eh oui! C'est moi!!" and it's not Brigitte after all, but her sister Francoise, who died just two years ago, after a long hard dance with cancer. I see her face, laughing, as clear as anything. And here I'd been thinking of my parents and my grandparents - but no, it's Francoise, my funny, fun-loving cousin. Tricksters are among us indeed.

My spirits soar. I put the tiny feather in my pocket and appreciate the day: the sky is deep blue, no clouds, a tiny smudge of moon like a white inkblot in the sky. Warm. Perfect. My thin peanut butter sandwich, eight cherry tomatoes and six pieces of banana take thirty minutes to chew. I have a mug of Yogi green tea with a message on the tea bag: "Speak the truth". That's what I'm trying to do this very minute! I contemplate eating the apple I have in my bag but - as I do on every retreat - I can't bear the thought of eating it mindfully: it will take half an hour all by itself. The apple stays in the bag, I eat a home-made brownie on the snack table in a quick and guilty two minutes, and return to the main room.

I am one of the first (!), so I get out my notebook and start writing what's happened so far. Slowly the others drift in and settle themselves flat on their backs with blankets and pillows. Peggy leads us in a guided meditation. She begins: "Get a sense of being on your island. Imagine you're on a big lily pad, the sun is out, there's a little breeze, dragonflies are in the air and you're safe there, just drifting a little bit. Imagine your fingers are just touching the water. We are doing such a great job of stopping together today. I'm very proud of us. It's not easy to stop. To slow down. But here we are."

This is where I set my notes aside and settle on my own lily pad. Peggy stops talking and starts to sing to us in a sweet, clear voice. Lullabies and chants.  A lot of the lyrics have to do with coming home, going home, being home. Home. Well, this is just bliss. After walking to the park hand-in-hand, my cheeky cousin appearing out of the blue, a brownie and now nap-time with lullabies? No wonder many of my fellows fall fast asleep on their islands. Snores began drifting up here and there, including someone quite near my head, quite loud. Peggy comments, "If you're not one of the snorers, perhaps you can just lie back and enjoy the magical zoo!" Muffled laughter snorts around the room. 

Again, no idea how long this lasts, but like all things, good and bad, it comes to an end. Gently, gently, we slowly get to our feet and began tapping the heart, our arms and legs, to get the blood flowing and wake up again. We twist from side to side, arms flopping against our kidneys: Peggy tells us she visited a village in China where the inhabitants are 120 years old and healthy and spry. She says their secret is that they do this movement for fifteen minutes every day. She says, "I do it for five. I'm in pretty good shape for an eighty-five year old, aren't I?!" 

Next she leads us in a delightful qigong sequence of highly symbolic moves. We begin by embracing the tiger of life, and throwing open the big wooden double doors to our life with both hands, saying 'Wah!" (Chinese for "Wow!" she tells us with a smile.) There are elements of fire and water and gold and wood. It is so beautiful, we do it twice.  When it is over, we walk around the room and gently bump into each other's shoulders, saying, "Thank you!" to each other. A clear illustration of the truth that every adverse situation you meet is here to teach you something. 

We have done sitting meditation, walking meditation, eating meditation and lying down meditation. Now we are at the heart of the day: the Touching the Earth ritual. It begins by standing tall and imagining our mothers standing behind us on one side, our fathers on the other, their hands resting on our shoulders. Behind them are their parents, and their parents' parents, back and back through generations, the idea being that we are not alone. Our ancestors are ready to support us, if only we would remember to call upon them for help. We get down on the floor and touch the earth while invoking them. We do this five times, summoning different teachers each time. It has a powerful feel.

When we are done, we sit once more on our cushions and Peggy invites us to the Sharing Circle. We can share anything at all: a song, a poem, an insight. We sit quietly for a while and then a small man to my right, gray-haired, stands up and says, "I would like to sing for you." His song is from the Broadway musical "All American"; he tells us that in the play, the actor sits on the edge of the stage and sings facing the audience. And with that he launches into "Once Upon a Time", such a romantic song he sings with such unabashed feeling, he has me in tears.

At the end, instead of clapping, everyone waves their hands in the air, the applause of the deaf. It retains the container of mindfulness that we have cultivated all day. 

There are stories of mothers and fathers and children, of hurts and wrongs revisited and steps taken towards acceptance. There are many more tears from us, the listeners. One that makes an impression on me comes from the woman seated behind me. She shares a beautiful story about how it wasn't until she joined a Vietnamese Buddhist Sangha that she understood what it means to love. She tells us how if it weren't for her practice, she would be in a mental asylum by now, for this year has been wave upon wave of disasters.

"Finally," she says, "I phoned my mentor, a Vietnamese nun and asked her what do I do? My husband is dying, and my daughter has a severe brain injury. She has sudden extreme rages and I am afraid she will not survive - what can I do?"

The gentle nun said, in her hesitant English, "Do you think you can see your daughter as she was when you saw her, two days old in the hospital, new, fresh, unspoiled? When all you felt for her was uncomplicated love?"

The woman continues, "I'm not taking credit for this, you understand. It's the practice. But I made that tiny change in the way I saw my daughter, and she responded with about a 90% change of her own. She's much calmer, she's started driving again, she's getting better. It's a miracle. And it's thanks to my mentor, who taught me how to love."

We nod, we bow our heads, we are moved. This is advice we can all use. To see the difficult people in your life as infants: how could you not love them?

More stories. Then the woman on my right says hesitantly, "I am Turkish, but I also speak French. I used to sing French songs and I would like to sing one for you now by ..."

Edith Piaf, I think.

"Edith Piaf." She pronounces it the French way - Ay-deet Piaf. She begins to sing "La Vie En Rose." Well, from the French side of my family, I know the songs of Ay-deet Piaf too and pretty soon I'm singing along quietly with her, watching her face.

 

Her eyes widen in the beginnings of panic, she's forgetting the lyrics and she's looking right at me, beseeching me with her eyes. So I sing a little louder, enough so she can catch the words, not wanting to muscle in on her song, but she smiles and relaxes and nods her head and is altogether encouraging, so I turn up the volume and so does she, and suddenly it's Life as a Musical, one of those rare and wonderful moments where people actually, spontaneously, burst into song in public. It's happened to me a handful of times in my life, all of them memorable. And here it's happening again, in a Quaker House at a Buddhist retreat honoring the Day of the Dead with a Turkish stranger singing in French with an Englishwoman - me! By the end, we are belting it out, and I can see those hands waving madly before we are even done singing.

We finish, grinning broadly at each other. Later, the woman will say, with tears in her eyes, "I'd forgotten how much fun it is to sing. I've been so busy saving the world, I forgot this thing I used to love. I'm going to sing more now."

For now though, there's a pause. Then I smile. "Of course you chose that song! The cousin I told you about. Francoise. With the feather... from lunch... in my pocket. She knew all of Edith Piaf's songs by heart too. I have sung it with her. It was one of our favorites." 

Now it's the end of the day. As a group, we sing one last song together, with such sweet and simple words: we are the sea, we are the stars in the sky and we are home.

And then the day is over. My park partner makes a point of thanking me for taking her hand. We busy ourselves putting away tables and tidying up. I am sorry to leave these kind people. Big hug to Peggy. I thank her for making me feel like a child again. "Oh!" she says, "You have no idea how I had to restrain myself when we got to the park! I had all these games in my head that we could play, but I thought no. But it was hard!" Never mind, I say, my little girl had a wonderful field trip. 

I think about my little girl, about Francoise, about Ay-deet Piaf. I realize that one of my greatest fears from the Three Day Retreat has been soothed. I had written, in a bit of a panic, "How can we ever communicate with each other? Our experiences are not - will never be - the same, and on top of it, they are changing inexorably every moment, as we are changing." Now I saw that while our shared experience held very different meanings for us both, that wasn't the important thing. That it happened at all is what matters.

Victor the next day quoted Bodhidharma:

"The wise one trusts to things and does not trust to self, and so he has neither grasping

nor rejecting, neither opposing nor agreeing.  The stupid one trust to self

and does not trust to things, and so he has grasping and rejecting, opposing 

and agreeing."

Trusting to things and not the self seems counter-intuitive, said Victor. But I think this little anecdote illustrates the concept quite well: the Turkish lady and I had very different stories in our heads about the meaning of our performance. Someone else could have joined in, coming from a third angle. They are all stories, the "dramas between the ears", as Victor calls them, and they can change at any moment, as we reflect, think, analyze and come up with other stories to layer on top of the event.

But the event itself? Ah! That's irrefutable! Thirty people were there to witness what happened: we sang from the heart and people smiled. That's all. And it's enough.

The next day, as I was driving, I had the strangest sensation. I felt hands on my shoulders: on my right was my mother, on my left was my dad. I felt like I was receiving a ghostly pat on the back. I felt protected and loved. My ancestors are with me. As yours are with you.