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By Root 1038 0

which felt like losing my best friend—a bright clear place in my head that delights and guides me and pops up with all kinds of ideas. Walking aimlessly around in the Goodwill one morning the sharp searing reality hit full force—I needed to leave my primary relationship. Even when I could concentrate, my writing was fractured and mushy. After the separation, as the brain fog gradually lifted, I wondered how many people were sacrificing their brilliance, creativity, and clarity to hold onto a relationship that wasn’t working. Regaining the clarity of my voice felt as if I had found my true lover—the aliveness within me. It took a long time.

Sometimes I would say to myself, “Everything that’s happening is life; I need to be present to whatever is going on.” But another part would say, “What a pain in the butt to get so lost and have all these interruptions.” Then, I would fly out into “big mind” and think about the people in Africa who have AIDS, the homeless children, the people in Baghdad or Afghanistan, women being battered, the torment of sexual slavery, or people around the globe living without adequate food, clean water, and, most of all, safety. Holding to this view became a profound challenge when faced with the recent news that my daughter was diagnosed with liver cancer. As I prepare to send this manuscript in later today, my daughter and I are planning a trip to a Club Med that we went to twenty-two years ago when she was in seventh grade. After that she’ll start chemotherapy.

Tonglin meditation has become my daily practice—it helps reduce my challenges to something like dust on the floor. I’ll think to myself, I am so lucky, I’ve had so much help to feel stable inside. I do have food, friends, a warm bed, and access to good health care. I can go to a physical therapist instead of limping for the rest of my life, I belong to a health club, I’ve got it easy. Even if they don’t accept this book or I have to give the money back, it’s so small.

While I have longed for more time to play the piano, hike, and see friends, there have been many moments of being unstuck: in protest of aging, I increased my morning workouts and did a sprint triathalon with three women friends. I got a medal as a result of being the only one in my age category—endurance finally won out! I avoided my usual writing weight gain, and with the help of Weight Watchers and the South Beach Diet I lost nearly twenty pounds. I’ve also hiked, canoed, and camped in these magnificent mountains and rivers with wonderful friends and attended many fine workshops, concerts, and plays. In short, life happened, the book got written, and I learned a lot in the process and feel more prepared to face the future.

Toward the end of my first book in 1988, I wrote of a sweet young black female cat I found in the garage on a minus 20 degree day in Minnesota. I still have a vivid memory of picking her up and feeling all my stress drain away as she burrowed into my chest. Ruby was my writing companion for twelve years, nearly always sitting on top of the computer, bapping me when I’d brush her tail off the screen. She’s buried on the hill behind my house. She wasn’t around for this book.

Now I am sitting at the computer with a new kitty, Sally, nestled in my lap. A little calico girl. She could care less about all these words—she simply wants to snuggle up and be petted. I keep thinking about the endless flow of sorrow and rejoicing, of gain and loss, that cycles through our lives, how to live with it, be part of it, yet let it all go, with amusement, love, and tenderness. This book has been my teacher; I hope it will speak to you as well.

Namaste,

Recommended Reading

Aslett, Don. Clutter’s Last Stand.

Barks, Coleman, and A. J. Arberry, translator. Like This: Rumi

Barks, Coleman, and John Moyne, translator. The Essential Rumi.

———. Say I Am You: Poetry Interspersed with Stories of Rumi and Shams.

Bly, Robert. The Kabir Book: Forty-four of the Ecstatic Poems of Kabir.

Boorstein, Sylvia. It’s Easier Than You Think: The Buddhist Way to Happiness.

Bunson,