CREATING BEAUTY OUT OF TRASH
While pruning the rose bushes in the backyard I uncovered a little bird’s nest nestled in the crotch of the prickly branches. The outer structure of the nest was made of dried passion fruit stems. Inside that sturdy casing lay a soft bed fashioned from wild grasses topped with rose leaves. Some industrious little Wren or Sparrow had built this perfect home with great effort. I carefully pruned the rose bush around the nest leaving it secure in its branches.
Like the little bird who made this soft home for her nestlings out of garden scraps, humans also repurpose found objects. There is a natural delight in making things out of broken ceramics, scraps of fabric and other throw away materials. When I was in art school I’d go down to the dump every Saturday to forage through the trash looking for materials to make sculptures. Whatever I found in the dump informed each new project. I was never disappointed by the variety of shapes and textures I’d find there. I have a friend who makes ink out of white galls that fall from Oak trees. I could never understand what purpose those little white and brown balls strewn across the road served, but someone figured out that they could smash them up, soak them in warm water and make ink. Whoever figured this out belongs in the creative persons hall of fame alongside the first person who decided to try eating an artichoke. The drawing of oak leaves above was made with Brenda’s Oak gall ink. Painting acorns and oak leaves with Oak gall ink and making sculpture from things other people find useless has an undeniable poetry about it.
A great chef can make memorable dishes out of things found in the refrigerator or foraged that day at the farmer’s market. Harriet Powers, and many other women throughout the ages, made quilts for their families out of scraps of worn fabric. Many of these quilts are now in museums. It requires imagination to take whatever is at hand and fashion it into something beautiful and useful. It also takes the need, or willingness, to use what is there rather than spending precious time bemoaning what isn’t there. When necessity calls we humans can be a lot like birds building nests out of twigs.
We all have a hodge podge of ingredients in our lives; our family, our friends, our economic situation, our education, where we live, our age, our strengths and our weaknesses. Some ingredients we chose and some seem to have been hoisted on us. These are the twigs and grasses of our life. Some things in our collection of odds and ends feel like unfortunate weeds we’d rather just pluck out and send to the dump heap, some feel like fragrant roses we wish would never die and others feel like thorns that tear at our skin. Each of these elements make up the mosaic of our unique lives. Every single piece is valuable. Joy can be repurposed into a wish for others to have joy. Pain can be repurposed to develop a richness of empathy and compassion for the suffering of others. A lost job can be repurposed into an opportunity to remake our work life. A broken heart can be fashioned into a more expansive, more available heart. When nothing is thrown away these twigs and thorns and roses can be used to form the elements of a rich life, a life unlike any other. Our wonderful, wild, life.
There are books on how to cut and piece rags together to make quilts, we can see how other artists pick up stones at a creek, or discarded items at the dump to make sculpture, but how do we take something as abstract as a broken heart and transform it into compassion? Thankfully, we are not left on our own to figure this out. Explorers before us have developed practices that show us how to pick up and rearrange the pieces. One such practice is Lojong training, developed by the Bengali meditation master Atisha in the 11th century CE. This practice takes us through a series of 59 sayings designed to help us recycle uncomfortable and painful feelings into spiritual power.
Included in the Lojong training is a practice called tonglen. In tonglen we breath in both our own suffering and the suffering of others and exhale relief, comfort and ease. For instance, if someone is angry at us, rather than getting angry back or shrinking in fear, we breath in their anger, take it right into our body, and then exhale ease or relaxation or whatever feels like the opposite of the anger coming at us and offer it to them. We turn towards the anger with an open heart rather than following our habitual pattern of closing up and trying to avoid the pain. This practice requires sincerity, courage and vulnerability for it to be effective. We are not simply parroting empty affirmations or performing gestures of kindness in order to be a good person or do the right thing. We are bravely taking in what we most want to reject and generously letting go of what we most want to hang on to.
Tonglen practice has a number of profoundly positive, and immediate, results. One important result is that this simple practice turns our natural tendency to avoid pain, anger and discomfort on its head. We offer the pleasant to others and take the unpleasant for ourselves. By taking in the heartache, instead of running away from it, we become open to a more creative response. Just this alone changes the entire dynamic within and without. We are no longer being hunted and hounded by dark forces. We turn and face them. We are in charge. This act of courage develops strength and faith in ourselves. A whole new world of limitless possibilities opens up. We are bigger than the heartache, bigger than the loss and bigger than the sadness or fear. We are more powerful than we imagined. We have the ability to turn suffering into joy, straw into gold!
Alongside meditation instructions like tonglen are the 59 sayings, such as All dharmas agree at one point and Correct all wrongs with one intention. We can use these sayings in our daily life to turn challenges into opportunities. In the spring I will be offering a Lojong practice series for those who would like to go deeper into these teachings. I’ll let you know the details as they develop. If you are interested in joining us send me a note at jacquelinek@vom.com I’ll put you on the information list. In the meantime, here’s one lojong saying you can easily bring into your daily life:
Be grateful for everyone.
Remember, there are no exceptions here-that’s the challenge! It helps to start by feeling gratitude towards people you love and who have loved and supported you then extend that feeling to people you are neutral towards- the person in line in front of you at the market, the delivery person, people on a park bench. Once that feeling is well established you can venture into extending gratitude towards people you are having difficulty with.
When Atisha was preparing to travel from India to Tibet he heard that the Tibetan people were loving and considerate. He decided that he’d better bring his short tempered servant with him so he would have someone to provide the challenge necessary for him to continue practicing lojong. When he reached Tibet he realized he needn’t have brought his servant. We are fortunate there is no end to disagreeable people ready and able to fuel our practice. Repurpose them! Make a nest out of everything you love, hate and couldn’t care less about. Endless twigs and grasses for your magnificent palace.