Thoughts

It’s definitely feeling like summer now. Even up in the mountains, we’re starting to have some heat waves although not as unbearable as it is in the valley. It is much cooler in the mornings and evenings just like on the Westside where we would get the ocean breeze.

My favorite thing to do during these warm summer days is cooking outdoor on our grill and dining on the deck watching the sky turn purple and counting stars. If we stay out late enough we can see the Milky Way and may even catch some shooting stars.

While I’m ready to welcome a new kitty or two into my life again, last week I got spend with two lovely kitties at my friend’s. Though one of them was too shy to let me play, the other one was friendly and affectionate. And when they do what they’re supposed to do … sleeping in the most comfy spot in the house, the sight of sleeping cat in the room gives me comfort.

I have to know how I can feel more than O.K. let alone happy even when things are not how I like them to be. It takes practice to be able to find peace and joy when the world or the life itself is a hot mess. As I sat with a lot of my fears, some sorrows, some frustrations in my retreat, one night my teacher said, “We’re not in a hurry.” What he meant was it takes as long as it takes for our practice to bring the peace and/or ease we want in our life. Hurrying to get somewhere when the rest of my being is not quite ready won’t bring about whatever I want.

It’s been more than 2 weeks since I left my meditation retreat. As deep and meaningful as this last retreat was, I’ve found it rather hard to find my groove in life again. It’s often challenging to come back to life after being away for some time, especially after some really good time whether active vacation or silent meditation retreat.

One of the big take away from my recent retreat was to realize that for the most part of my adult life, I believed that there was something fundamentally wrong with me even though I couldn’t quite articulate it. There was this nagging feeling that something was blocking me from being all I could be. And one night the teacher said during his Dharma talk, “there’s nothing wrong with you.” After sitting with that one simple thoughts for a day or so, I finally got it was about “trusting.” Trusting that I am on the right path, and I am growing in exactly the right way no matter how imperfect it seems. There’s nothing fundamentally wrong with me like I had believed. As long as I’m following my heart, I must trust that I am making my own contributions to the world in a way that’s unique to me. And as long as I’m working with people with similar values, the impact can be much bigger than I, as an individual, can make. So there, I’m choosing to trust my long and winding journey and letting go of a burden of carrying the problems on my shoulders. Phew...

As I settled into the retreat and watched my mind slowly starting to slow down, emotions began to arise. It’s not that I was suppressing all my emotions before but I opened up for more space to feel deeply. The losses I’ve experienced in the last two years starting with my beloved kitty, with my mom’s journey for her passing, plus 5 more dear friends passing within a period of 6 months last year were very present in my heart. In fact, that’s what led Buddha to his search: Old age, sickness and death. I wasn’t afraid of them for myself, or so I thought before. As it turns out, I was more afraid of having to witness and experience the losses of my loved ones, which I became keenly aware to be happening more often as I get older. It was probably 5 days into the retreat that I came to viscerally understand this reality. I went into the forest in the back of the retreat center and cried deeply.

For a good 20+ years since I started meditation practice, I would go to silent retreats at least once a year. I really cherish the time in silence for an extended time to go within, sometimes it was just for a weekend, sometimes for as long as a couple of weeks. While I’ve wanted to do a month or longer retreats, my life didn’t offer me such “luxury.” Indeed, it feels rather luxurious to be able to take time off my life to go meditate even for a few days when life seems to keep churning more things I “have to” do.

As I drove in to the Westside and saw those purple clouds, I was excited and immediately thought about Mom. I always looked forward to telling her that jacarandas were blooming. Then I realized I was frantically trying to obtain a visa to get to Japan to see her just about a year ago. Remembering the hoops I had to go through to get there and get to see my mother, who was in a hospital about to make her transition as we thought, feels almost surreal today. Wow. It’s been a year since I went to Japan in the middle of “state of emergency” in Japan. And I actually don’t get to give her the jacaranda report this year. 😢

It was that day I shot this image after the hike. He was home now just where and when he loved to be. I was so lucky that the confluence of events perfectly brought me there in the right moment. This image has become the most dear to my heart as I know he’s there. It was also my father who taught me how to use an all manual Nikon camera way back when I was a teenager, and it was also him (and my family) who instilled my love of nature, to appreciate the changing seasons, and to care for this Earth.

It’s no brainer, an established idea that gratitude is an antidote to our sufferings. With this routine of listing things I’m grateful for, I definitely tend to catch more little things throughout the day that I think to myself, “Thank God!” even with a small little acknowledgement that I finally have an appointment for a hair cut next week!

As the world seems to be back to the pre-pandemic busy-ness, I’m clinging to the stillness we witnessed in pandemic that allowed more present awareness to watch the cycles of life bringing both joy and sadness. I’m now opening myself to more experiences of life with some furry companions.

Well, it seems like I’m pondering on this questions over and over again. I’m reminded of a passage from Rilke’s book, “Letters to the Young Poet,” where he suggests, “Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.” I trust that the answers will come. Meanwhile, I get to enjoy the spring in the mountains today.

The world is a different place in many ways today because of the pandemic that we just went through. Even though today we see so much suffering – heartbreaking suffering, I would like to believe that somehow the world is more interconnected in a way that can help us to be more conscious of how precious our lives are and there are so many opportunities for healing. Am I dreaming? I hope not….

As I’m much older now, it obviously takes longer to recover from days of hard work. At the moment I’m savoring this slight change of pace from the intense period of work. Getting to the ridge on the trail where you can see the ocean merging with the blue sky, it made me gasp with a realization that, “Oh, I am here hiking.” Although it’s a simple awareness, after I had been running at full speed for some time, it was a refreshing moment. A moment when I came back to my body to know where I was. That’s called mindfulness. How simple…yet can be so elusive.

It’s indeed my desire to be energized, relaxed and balanced — while I’m so aware life isn’t always like that, which I can accept, and I guess it is a good goal to have on a daily basis. So just for today, I do feel energized, and thank God, I do feel relatively relaxed. And I’m grateful. All I can do is to one day at a time to strive for balance!

Through trials and errors, I have found – or rather created – a path that I can be myself and be creative in my endeavors of being a realtor, a little bit differently. Like I said last week, it’s definitely a path less traveled. As I keep reminding myself, the mantra or I should say, “the buzz word” is “Trust.” The process of trying and learning to blaze my trail is the journey that keeps me nourished and motivated.

All this to say that the last two years many people including ourselves ended up moving to somewhere where “nature” is readily available to connect with although nature is still there in the cities. Yet I think the disconnect in urban life does exacerbate the sense of isolation and frustration. So it keeps me asking myself where I’m going in my life both literally and figuratively. Then again, I’m trusting the process as I always have, and we’re all part of this big tapestry of mysteries, and it only brings me back to this moment right here.

Now that I have less years ahead than behind and looking back, I can’t imagine doing it any other way. Some may see my path as wasteful, but the waste for me became the fertilizers for how my life is still evolving into. I do hate wasting food, energy, and any materials. I drive my husband crazy as I always nag him about not wasting anything. Yet in the case of my life, I don’t feel like I have wasted my life so far as everything is now a part of me.

Indeed, having learned English had provided me with so many opportunities for me to learn, to discover, to experience, to grow, and make some differences in the world. Many, many dreams came true, which led me to have more dreams. As I reflect on this milestone, I am profoundly grateful for so many people I met along the way who guided me, believed in me, supported me and cheered for me. I am grateful for the freedom I’ve had to explore this life that I don’t think I could have had I stayed in or returned to Japan. Despite all the problems we face socially, politically, environmentally and otherwise, this is the country that has given me the space to discover myself, stumble around, keep trying, and keep growing. It is indeed a privilege for me to live in this country as a first-generation immigrant and to be able to pursue my dreams of making this a better world.

It was probably mid to late 1990s that I was first introduced to Vipassana meditation. A friend of mine invited me to go listen to Shinzen Young, a teacher who was then based in Los Angeles and had a small following. Meditation itself wasn’t a foreign activity for me, but I couldn’t say I had a particular practice. The teachings I heard from Shinzen sounded very practical — and I was intrigued. It wasn’t until 2000 as I was turning 40 and my father was diagnosed with terminal cancer, I decided I wanted to have something to lean on spiritually and sought a meditation practice, which happened to be Vipassana tradition. It is what is popularized as “mindfulness meditation” today.