Thank you, Ani Pema, for teaching about peace.
I had a thought last week while lying on a massage table: I don’t care whether the therapist comes back in to do the massage or not; it feels so lovely just to lie here. The type of peace I was experiencing is what my teacher calls “cured peace.” It comes about due to something occurring, usually something extremely simple—seeing a sunset, listening to ocean waves, putting on warm socks and snuggling under thick blankets on a cold night. This type of peace feels like a temporary cure to our usually complex, sometimes painful existence.
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| Sunset: Tamarack State Beach, Carlsbad, CA |
Cured peace is great. May all beings experience much, much cured peace. But we also experience another type of peace: inner peace. Inner peace exists regardless of what is occurring. It was probably as a child at church that I first heard a description of inner peace that sounded honest—a peace that Saint Paul says passeth understanding.
Different traditions describe inner peace in different ways, and give different reasons for it, but I agree with Paul for sure on one point: this peace doesn’t make any sense at all. We're taught to move away from our pain to experience peace, not that great inner peace exists within pain. I read somewhere that most every adult lives through at least 1 tremendously painful event that changes them forever. Maybe this comes in the form of a broken heart or a tragic accident or a long ago act of abuse that lives on in our nightmares. And maybe the sense of peace we experience in the midst of such deep hurt comes only in glimpses—a momentary gap of sanity in the middle of the unthinkable.
I know that I’m not telling you anything you don’t know. But we get confused. We get desperate. In moments when we’re hurting or shut down, we may look outside of ourselves, searching for something—anything—to move us away from the pain. We look for cured peace, when what may make more sense is to simply be still and give inner peace an opportunity to shine through.
The spacious mind has room for everything. It is like the space in a room,
which is never harmed by what goes in and out of it. -Ajahn Sumedho
Of course it’s wise to work on opening to pain in your own timing and in your own way. A mindfulness practice called tonglen helps me to open. The word tonglen means “giving and taking,” which is what happens during this practice. We sit still and intentionally take in our own pain or the pain of someone else with each inbreath. We feel the heaviness of the pain, the sadness, and so on, and let it live in our body and heart for a while. And of course we breathe out again, and the exhalation offers space.
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| Breathe in pain, breathe out space. Childbirth: Patti and Baby Kara (mosaic composed of baby photos) |
In this way, we are reminded of how pain and peace can occupy the same space, even the same breath. We may even give up on labeling it as "my" pain, "your" pain, or "their" pain, and just breathe in and out the spaciousness that lives inside of all pain. May we all experience stillness and peace in the midst of what hurts us most.
I Go Among Trees and Sit Still, by Wendell Berry
I go among trees and sit still.
All my stirring becomes quiet
around me like circles on water.
My tasks lie in their places
where I left them, asleep like cattle.
Then what is afraid of me comes
and lives a while in my sight.
What it fears in me leaves me,
and the fear of me leaves it.
It sings, and I hear its song.
Then what I am afraid of comes.
I live for a while in its sight.
What I fear in it leaves it,
and the fear of it leaves me.
It sings, and I hear its song.
After days of labor,
mute in my consternations,
I hear my song at last,
and I sing it. As we sing,
the day turns, the trees move.
