Living on the Edge of What Matters Most – Diane Moore
In our daily practice life we make efforts, large and small, to commit to sitting with stillness, clear seeing, perseverance, willingness, and loving-kindness. During
Practice Period we intentionally address the nooks and crannies where we are inclined to hide from ourselves. We commit to leaning into the edginess of our lives rather than running for cover. Experience tells us of the value of this effort.
And yet when practice period ends we often begin to turn away from the very thing
we found most satisfying.
As we continue experiencing life’s unfolding, daily evidence of human
suffering—images of victims of natural disaster, gun violence, or war—makes it
hard not to turn away. We can forget our tools, lose our focus, and shift to
hopelessness and despair at the collective human situation. We are at our edge. We
don’t want it to be this way. We are tempted to retreat from our commitment to
awareness and instead shift to the ever-ready and oh-so-familiar blaming, judging,
raging response that we know so well. And while it is understandable that we fall
into despair when we are dealing with life’s most tragic moments, isn’t it also true
that we are tempted to do the same thing with relatively minor disappointments or
irritations?
The milk spills in the car, our plans get interrupted, someone says something harsh
to us, or heaven forbid just says something we disagree with, and it is stunning to
observe our own ability to spiral into despair. As if it was a crisis. The package
didn’t arrive—edgy. The appreciation wasn’t expressed—edgy. The words came
out harsh—edgy. The flight got canceled—edgy. There was an overcharge on the
bill—edgy. The person across from you is sure they are right—edgy.
We live in a world of edges, small and ruffled, large and jagged, and each presents
its unique opportunity to bring forward awareness of our own personal desire to
hide.
How long will it take this time before we once again bow in stillness to our own
hurt, defensiveness, heartache, and pain? How long will it be this time before we
allow for clear seeing to show itself not only in the relentless flood of thoughts, but
also in the discomfiture in the body and in the larger texture of the environment
around us?
With perseverance, we observe ourselves as we fall back to the familiar internal
dialogue, and we watch ourselves fiercely proclaim our rage at the injustice of this
person or that organization. We experience our own stifled sadness as we
acknowledge the urge to turn to food, alcohol, or remember with remorse our
expressed irritability toward a family member or friend.
As much as we want to separate ourselves, when we bring forward willingness, we
once again become aware that we are in fact part of a human collective experience
of living. We are one with the other. And they are one with us. And our attempts to
separate ourselves out are futile denials of the interconnectedness of life as it is.
So here we are. Back to the beginning of facing another edge. Sitting with just one
breath at a time welcoming our sorrows. Witnessing our thoughts, feeling our
bodies, noticing the environment that surrounds us. The place where we see that
the air that touches our skin, yours and mine, is part of the continuum of a unified
whole.
As Naomi Shihab Nye writes:
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes…1
When we allow ourselves to sit with our own rage, our own hurt, our own inability
to stay with our practice edge, we also allow ourselves to open to someone else’s
inability to stay with the sometimes unbearable experience of life. We find what we
have in common. And while the question “How could he or she do this?” remains,
Living on the Edge of What Matters Most 2
by staying present to the unbearable pain we can see that it too is part of the
interconnected whole. His pain, her pain, my pain—the pain we all share.
This can only be proven in the experiential world. Someone else’s words are not
enough. But Naomi Shahib Nye’s poem and our practice guideposts are
encouragement to persevere toward loving-kindness. To be willing to clearly see
all that blocks our heart from opening, and to stay, stay, stay with our own
broken-hearted struggle with life as it is right now. As we watch ourselves
experience the futility of rage and blame, we also might just watch ourselves
experience the willingness to open to compassion for our own heartache.
Compassion for our own struggle.
And when the veil of separation rises, life simply unfolds as it will.
Our authentic openheartedness prevails. It’s what matters most. It is genuinely satisfying. And
each time it shows itself, it inspires us to continue to notice that it goes everywhere
with us, like a shadow or friend, just waiting to be noticed.
1 Naomi Shihab Nye, “Kindness.” Words Under the Words: Selected Poems. Eighth Mountain
Press, 1994.
2 Ezra Bayda, “What is Our Life About?” Being Zen. Shambhala Publications, 2003.
3 Nye, “Kindness.”
