Category: mindfulness

I listened to Joseph Goldstein at mindpod. “May my life be a benefit to all.”

Have a kind heart. “In the depth of my heart, I do not hold a grudge against anyone,” Goldstein quotes the Dalai Lama. I feel the same way. I really have no ax to grind against anyone.

“When compassion and emptiness are both present, enlightenment is unavoidable.”

I used to listen to Joseph Goldstein while I was writing. Something about his humility inspires and moves me. He seems able to set aside his ego. I took an afternoon workshop with him one afternoon near St. John the Divine. We did a walking meditation near the fountain. Feeling our feet as they hit the ground, the coming and the going. Being with ourselves. Emptying our thoughts of everything but the present moment.

Goldstein says something like, Our lives tend to revolve around self-centeredness. It’s true. And we look outside ourselves for deep meaning. But sitting quietly once a day helps me find my center. Pay attention.

I sat in the courtyard at Trinity Church after co-teaching Kindergarten. I have a bit of a cold and am starting to feel run down.

I had wanted to see the movie Bridge of Lies, but, after sitting quietly, I’d stopped by the handbag department of Century 21 — a different kind of mindfulness. So many beautiful bags. (I bought one!) I also called my doctor and scheduled my annual physical.

I came home.

The joys of emptiness — this may be why Marie Kondo’s The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up is so effective. And why minimalism works.

I think I should toss out an old purse since I bought a new one. I should tidy. Declutter. But I’m going to read and listen to the rest of Joseph Goldstein. More inspiration:

‘Live in the nowhere, even though we have an address.’

‘Better to stand on the firm ground of emptiness than the quicksand of something-ness.’

Tomorrow I am back in the high school, teaching my 10th Graders. In a day my students go from kindergarten to high school. Just like my own children. In a flash, they’ve grow up. I try to remain a still center.

This morning a train was pulling into the station. The sky was that perfect autumn blue, blue, blue. And I was thinking, Oh, I love this moment so much. This moment right before the train arrives, I must take a picture. The bright silver Long Island Railroad and its approach. The white headlight.

But a picture would only capture a fraction of the experience. And my picture might even be a bit cliche — train’s a’coming, Ma! — we’ve seen that picture.

A picture would not catch the noise – the steel braking against rail. The feel of the cold Autumn air in my hair. The way the cement platform sways, ever so slightly. Or the smell and taste of my not-very-warm-enough coffee.

I was coming from Queens (and last night drove my girls to a Sweet Sixteen in the Bronx — too much with the boroughs, girls!)

Char was in a webseries (and I’d look it up but I’m too tired, (ready for bed)). We wondered if the webseries was legit so I offered to join her and check it out. We were a little suspicious becasue the writer/director’s phone number was six digits, not seven or nine. And the subject of the episode seemed to be about the kidnapping of a teen.

“Is the material even appropriate, hon?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think so,” she said. Ugh! Thus I was on the Auburndale platform in Queens early on a Sunday morning.

As soon as I saw the set, I felt at ease. The episode was being shot a comic shop. Other parents hovered around their star teens like unnecessary satellites. I remembered my own foray into an independent film series when I was way young., Yes, the Adventures of Go Girl! And we shot our episode in a comic shop too.

I wondered, if Charlotte ever has a daughter, Will she shoot her independent film in a comic shop too? Will comic shops even exist then? Will I exist to meet any possible granddaughter? These were questions I asked myself, waiting on the train platform.

It’s no secret that my favorite night of the month is book club. This month we read Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson. How good is this book! Don’t read it before bed because it is too disturbing — the way our justice system is fixed — against children, women, people who have no money for counsel, African Americans, and people with mental illnesses. And God forbid, you fit more than one of those categories, you are done for. Locked up and forgotten. Or worse, abused, raped in prison. And that’s all before your hearing even starts.

And despite the nausea that these stories induced — over the miscarriages of justice — there is so much brilliant writing. Take this:

My years of struggling against inequality, abusive power, poverty, oppression, and injustice had finally revealed something to me about myself. Being close to suffering, death, executions and cruel punishments didn’t just illuminate the brokenness of others; in a moment of anguish and heartbreak, it also exposed my own brokenness. You can’t effectively fight abusive power, poverty, inequality, illness, oppression and not be broken by it.

We are all broken by something. We have all hurt someone and have been hurt. We all share the condition of brokenness even if our brokenness is not equivalent. I desperately wanted mercy…

Wow. The work of racial and social justice — changing broken systems — is a kind of mindfulness. An invocation of our shared human experience. We have to give one another the dignity, a dignity that we would want for ourselves, our family members, be they judges, jailers, prisoners. In Just Mercy, Stevenson does offer
a strain of hope — a light when the wrongfully charged are freed. It is an important book.

I will be honest. I did not vote for this book. (We have a complicated voting system to pick our books.) I was hoping for fiction. But maybe next month. In any case, I’m glad I read this and I hope you will read it too. And then talk about it.