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Insights Into Practices: Closed Fist or Open Hand?
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A Favorite Quote
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What I’m Cooking – Asparagus Soup
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Half-Day Retreat, July 13th
“Stopping, calming, and resting are preconditions for healing…The world needs healing. Individuals, communities and nations need healing.”
– Zen teacher Thich Nhat Hanh
A worthy experiment is to make a fist with one hand, closing your fingers really tight and notice how you feel. Then, slowly open your hand with fingers extended and be aware of how this influences you.
It can be easy, especially these days, to live our lives with a closed fist, and not even be aware of it. Every day, sometimes every hour, there is more alarming news coming out of Washington.
A closed fist or an open hand is a useful and important way of noticing your approach to whatever you are doing and more broadly, how you are living, right now. Metaphors are powerful and the language we use to think about ourselves, describe our actions, and view our lives can have real impact.
The metaphor of comparing your life to “juggling lots of balls” during a particularly full day, can be self-fulfilling. Ball juggling, or plate juggling can be frenetic, and often the balls or plates come crashing down.
Instead, I prefer the metaphor of “planting lots of seeds.” Ahhh, seed-planting is much slower, more conscious, and gentler than ball juggling. You can decide what seeds to water or not. I much prefer my life be more like gardening and less like juggling. It’s “just” a shift in language, and yet it can shift our approach, from a closed fist to an open hand.
This week I’ve been studying the teachings of Thich Nhat Hanh. He brings a good deal of accessibility, warmth, and practicality to the practice of noticing when we are sad, lonely or angry and describes practices for bringing understanding to when we are tight or stressed. Here is his five-step approach to working with a closed fist:
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1) Recognition – I’m living with a closed fist (or any kind of stress, anxiety, or anger) and I bring awareness to it.
2) Acceptance – Being tight or closed is what is present.
3) Embracing – Not pushing away these strong feelings but appreciating what is.
4) Looking Deeply – Bring curiosity to what is the cause of these feelings and emotions.
5) Insight – Touching understanding and bringing more choice into our daily lives.
He goes on to suggest that these practices can shift our energy from striving to resting. “Stopping, calming, and resting are preconditions for healing…The world needs healing. Individuals. Communities and nations need healing.”
The Practice
Notice: Are you living, working, communicating, with a closed fist or an open hand? What supports you to be more open?
Notice how the quest for perfection is a noble idea, except when it leads you to tighten and close. Explore enjoying imperfection; being less caught, less tightening around ideas of perfection.
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A Favorite Quote
“If you try to adjust yourself in a certain way, you will lose yourself. So without any intentional, fancy way of adjusting yourself, to express yourself freely as you are is the most important thing to make yourself happy, and to make others happy. You will acquire this kind of ability by practicing meditation.”
– Shunryu Suzuki, from Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind
What I’m Cooking This Week – Asparagus Soup
It’s easy these days to become separated or distant from the food we eat, that nourishes and sustains us. Very few of us grow our own food, and I’m often surprised how many people rarely cook. I like to make it a point to make bread, soup, or salad as often as I can.
Explore the practice of cooking as a creative and nourishing process. Let your hands and mind open; just chopping, cooking, and loving…
Here is a simple recipe for Asparagus Soup
Saute 1 onion and a leek in olive oil. (salt and pepper to taste.)
Add about 1.5 pounds of chopped asparagus.
Add one small potato, in small pieces.
Put in 6 cups of water, cover and simmer for 10 – 15 minutes.
Cool briefly and puree.
(You can hold back some of the asparagus tips and add after you puree.)
Season with salt and pepper, and perhaps some lemon juice.
Half-day Retreat, In-Person and Online, July 13th (Mill Valley)
In our world of busyness, of more/faster/better, this half-day retreat offers time to stop, reflect, and renew. We will explore the practices of effort and effortless as a path to well-being and “stepping into your life.” Together we’ll follow a gentle schedule of sitting and walking meditation, a talk, and some discussion. Anyone looking to begin or deepen a meditation and mindfulness practice is invited to attend. What is meditation? I like a definition proposed by Dogen, the 13th century founder of Zen in Japan: “The practice I speak of is not meditation. It is simply the dharma gate of repose and bliss…It is the manifestation of ultimate reality…Once its heart is grasped, you are like a dragon when he gains the water, like a tiger when she enters the mountains.”
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Warmest regards,
Marc