Thoughts

I’m grateful that living in this kind of community is showing me the importance of belonging. Certainly, there are communities I’ve belonged to as I lived in the city. Yet the nature of the communities are different. I have spiritual communities, professional communities, and social communities that maintain a common thread yet were not necessarily formed around the geographical factors whereas this community is literally nestled in the forest.

My imagination was activated thinking about the indigenous people living in this seemingly desolate land with thriving culture. The more I learn more about regenerative life practice, the more fascinated I am by the wisdom the indigenous people had amassed from being tuned in to the nature that surrounded them. They knew how to live with the nature in harmony.

As I meet this Ohigan this year, it is particularly poignant because it will be a year next Thursday since my mother passed away. It was a long journey for her to finally cross over to the other side. Having had to navigate the complications of being able to visit her in the hospital and cleaning out her apartment by myself in a short period also felt like a long journey for me. And my mother’s ashes have not been returned from the medical research group where she donated her body. It may take another year based on what they said when they picked her up, which extends the last leg of her journey until she settles in a graves site.

This realization about my grandfather is almost confirming my suspicion this “regenerative practice” I’m trying to cultivate as I develop my real estate business around is to go back to learn from the way we, humans, lived before. I’m learning about terms and concepts like permaculture, biophilia, and biomimicry. For thousands of years humans co-existed with the nature in reciprocity, which we slowly lost in the age of industrialization and technology. It’s not that we have to go into the jungle or desert to live like cavemen again, but to re-learn how to coexist with our environment in a reciprocal manner feels like the right thing to do.

And let me be the one to confess I am far from being a regenerative practitioner despite my intention and desire to live consciously. I still use fossil fuel to heat my house, dry my clothes and cook. I buy food in plastic packages and use products in plastic containers. I am desperately trying to compost so I can divert my food waste from methane producing landfill but not quite succeeding yet. It pains me that these actions I take are certainly contributing to everything that’s challenging us globally.

While this gathering is exciting, I’m honestly a bit nervous about leaving the kitties behind for the period. We have a kind neighbor, who’s very much happy to take care of them for us. Based on the personalities so far, I think they’ll warm up to her easily. But you know… I guess it’s more of my selfish concern that they may forget about me after having bonded! Well, I just have to trust they would do fine without me and remember me when I return

We had a blessing of a little more rain last week. The current climate condition tends to bring some intense downpour in a short time. The last one probably lasted less than an hour and still created some minor flush flood in our neighborhood. Yet for this extremely thirsty earth around here, it is so refreshing to be wet.

I realized it was desperately missing this energy in my life. It feels so good to be tuned into these beings, who were so new to life and vulnerable, to be able to bond with them to provide safety and comfort. I guess it is the maternal instinct. I find myself spending the evenings fully engaged with them rather than engaged with my computer screen.

As we learn to live more mindfully, we get to accept how everything is today. We don’t have to like it, but we don’t have to be terribly disturbed by it, either. I believe in human resilience. Many people are already making different choices today in order to make our lives more manageable, to be closer to nature, to live more harmoniously, and to be more regenerative. Not to discount all the hardships COVID brought about, but if COVID brought more people to awaken to what’s more important in our lives, perhaps it was a blessing in disguise.

So it went. That’s how my birthday was, and it was fantastic. My favorite definition of “mindfulness” is from James Baraz that says, “Mindfulness is simply being aware of what is happening right now without wishing it were different; enjoying the pleasant without holding on when it changes (which it will); being with the unpleasant without fearing it will always be this way (which it won’t).” Such simple wisdom that I cherish is what makes my life so rich.

I have been saying “I’m ready” for a few months.  Ready to have new furry members for my family.  And at last, they’re here!  They’re 12-week old twins (actually two out of four littermates)!  We brought them home last week from the local shelter.  They were named differently at the shelter, but we had our granddaughter, London, names them.  We were surprised when she came up with “Benji” and “Zoey” and not names from her favorite Disney movies. 

I’m sitting by the window where cool breeze is blowing through. It’s a nice yet ordinary summer afternoon after a relatively ordinary work day. The Fourth weekend was also an ordinary weekend for me as there was no fireworks. It was just another quiet weekend up here.

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. 😢