Charnel Grounds

I'm in the charnel grounds tonight.  Three months ago yesterday, I said hello and goodbye to my boy.  

Yesterday came and went with an abundance of joy in my heart.  I've been directing my attention at back-to-school, re-establishing my yoga practice, eating mindfully, and connecting with my girl.  We lit candles for Julien yesterday, spoke of him freely, and felt a lightheartedness about the house.  

This morning, I woke up with a sick feeling in my gut.  All day, the thought of food has turned my stomach.  More than once, I've felt my heart racing forward and my shallow breath sticking in my chest.  I'm reminded of the days just after Julien's birth when the sum of what had happened would hit me all at once and trigger a pounding in my heart.  I also felt this way right after my dad passed away last year.  I couldn't eat meat for days.

This is dark stuff.  This is what no one wants to talk about.  This is that feeling that arises when we come face to face with our own mortality... when, for just a flashing moment we consider the complete annihilation of the self we perceive ourselves to be -- or when we get a fleeting glimpse of what it would feel like to stand, with all of our profanity, in the face of the divine.

Some would call this the dissolution of ego.  A theologian named Rudolf Otto called it, "mysterium tremendum."  A woman I know, a dear friend and confidant, calls it, "walking with god."  Pema Chodron, a Tibetan Buddhist nun, calls it the charnel ground.  If you've come to my blog by way of your own loss, the following description may not be for you.  In When Things Fall Apart, Pema explains:

"In Tibet the charnel grounds were what we call graveyards, but they weren't quite as pretty as our graveyards. The bodies were not under a nice smooth lawn with little white stones carved with angels and pretty words. In Tibet the ground was frozen, so the bodies were chopped up after people died and taken to the charnel grounds, where the vultures would eat them. I'm sure the charnel grounds didn't smell very good and were alarming to see. There were eyeballs and hair and bones and other body parts all over the place. In a book about Tibet, I saw a photograph in which people were bringing a body to the charnel ground. There was a circle of vultures that looked to be about the size of two-year-old children—all just sitting there waiting for this body to arrive."

The charnel grounds are the manifestation of awakened energy.  They are the ability to be present with whatever we are feeling.  They are the humble awareness that human existence isn't always pretty... or as Pema puts it, "is grounded in some honesty about how the human realm functions. It smells, it bleeds, it is full of unpredictability, but at the same time, it is self-radiant wisdom, good food, that which nourishes us, that which is beneficial and pure."

Two of my grandmothers passed away this summer.  The first died the day after our boy.  This is something that - even now - I have not fully wrapped my mind and heart around.  The mortuary kept their bodies together until each was returned to the earth.  It was several weeks before the grandchildren gathered together at her house.  This gave my immediate family some time for grieving our boy.  By the day we gathered to sort my grandmother's belongings, I was beginning to learn how to compose myself, get dressed, and get through the day.  Spending that time at her house with my extended family brought me right back to day one of my grief -- right back to the charnel grounds.

I'm here again tonight.  

As I posted the day before yesterday, a woman with whom I share a close friendship is in the long process of losing her mother right now.  She's in that raw and aching place where I dare not say another word for fear it might feel like salt in her broken heart.  Another woman, a radiant and creative soul, shared with me today that, years ago, she lost her baby.  Even now, she grieves.  Also, on this night, a woman in Argentina - someone I've never met - is giving birth to her stillborn baby just a few weeks shy of her due date.  Their losses takes me back to mine.  Our suffering connects us in ways we never consider.

I've written too much tonight and can't summarize my thoughts.  My heart is just too heavy right now... but my mind keeps turning back to Pema's words -- so I'll share those here now:

"Chaos is part of our home ground. Instead of looking for something higher or purer, work with it just as it is." 

One or Two Things

1
Don't bother me
I've just
been born.

2
The butterfly's loping flight
carries it through the country of the leaves
delicately, and well enough to get it
where it wants to go, wherever that is, stopping
here and there to fuzzle the damp throats
of flowers and the black mud; up
and down it swings, frenzied and aimless; and sometimes

for long delicious moments it is perfectly
lazy, riding motionless in the breeze of the soft stalk
of some ordinary flower

3
The god of dirt
came up to me many times and said
so many wise and delectable things; I lay
on the grass listening
to his dog voice,
crow voice,
frog voice; now
he said, and now,

and never once mentioned forever,

4
which has nevertheless always been,
like a sharp iron hoof,
at the center of my mind.

5
One or two things are all you need
to travel over the blue pond, over the deep
roughage of the trees and through the stiff
flowers of lightning --- some deep
memory of pleasure, some cutting
knowledge of pain.

6
But to lift the hoof!
For that you need
an idea.

7
For years and years I struggled
just to love my life. And then

the butterfly
rose, weightless, in the wind.
"Don't love your life
too much," it said,

and vanished
into the world.

- Mary Oliver

I heard this poem last year during a Monday night class with Jack Kornfield at Spirit Rock Meditation Center.  Those last few lines have been lodged in my mind ever since.  "Don't love your life too much," says the butterfly.  This is the stinging message I feel like sharing with everyone since losing my boy. 

For me, the butterfly is a symbol of our impermanence.  With both its short life cycle and its metamorphosis, it represents a deep truth about the nature of reality -- that one thing always changes into another.  The butterfly is telling us not to grow too attached to things as they are because everything, even our suffering, is temporary.  In my grief, I also hear the butterfly shouting out a reminder not to let our lives pass us by.  This is the "idea" we need to "lift the hoof."  When we are touched by death, we see the preciousness of life.

When I look back on all of the stress, anxiety, and depression I've had in the past (and there was a lot of it), it all feels like dress rehearsal for what my family is experiencing now.  It all seems like small stuff.  While I wish I would have seen the preciousness of life back then (and skipped all of the years I struggled) I also think that going through all of that gave me some tools for navigating these waters now.  All of our experiences are our teacher.  

The "one or two things" seem to be hinting at the non-dual nature of reality.  Life and death, pleasure and pain -- these are inseparable and this knowledge gives life meaning... but this alone doesn't end our suffering.

The "sharp iron hoof" must be our human suffering -- the nagging feeling that something is wrong with our lives.  It's my understanding of the Buddhist teaching that we experience this dissatisfaction, or dukkha, when we deny the transient nature of reality -- when we grasp too tightly to things as they are -- and when we desire for things to be different. 

Maybe this poem is saying that by accepting the impermanent nature of reality, the sharp iron hoof at the center of our mind is lifted... that our suffering ends when we see that each fleeting moment is beautiful just as it is... and that we would be wise to realize this, to listen to the god of dirt saying, "now," before it's too late.