z: Just breathe

Today I did my second Beginner’s One Day Sitting. This means that I sat in the zendo, meditating, for most of the day. But not really, because it was a beginner’s sitting so we didn’t start sitting until 10:15, only sat for 20 minutes at a time, and had lunch, a dharma talk, and tea.

This is what I learned from my one day sit: all you have to do is sit there and breathe. Really, that’s all I had to do. I also figured out, that this is all just about breathing.

I’ve kind of been experiencing a mini- crisis, in a bunch of ways. I skipped morning zazen two days last week because I was sick and because I had to stay up late the night before to attend school events. Even when I did go to zazen, I was mostly thinking, not really breathing. Then with figuring out how all of this fits in with teaching, I’ve just been totally in my head.

When I sat today, I just kept reminding myself to breathe. And that’s all I did, breathe. I breathed during zazen, breathed during kinjin, and the coolest thing was that, during lunch, as I started rushing through my pasta salad, I stopped and just breathed. And I ate the rest of my lunch that way, just breathing, just slowing down. I felt much like I had this summer: present without even trying.

But then things got kind of funny- and not in a good way. After having a somewhat breathful morning of zazen, I kind of freaked out. See, before school started up again this fall, I had this great fear that I wouldn’t be in to teaching, that I would be more interested in what I was doing at the zen center than what I was doing at school. Halfway through the first week of school, it actually happened, I felt like I wasn’t in to teaching anymore and I was totally bummed out. But then I made it through the first week and ended up having a really good weekend, learning about the kids and planning the next week’s lessons and genuinely wanting to be back in the classroom.  

But then with the Beginner’s Sitting going so well this morning, I felt this draw toward the zen center again and away from teaching. I don’t like this feeling. I don’t want to not be a teacher and I can’t say that I actually want to be whatever I would be if I followed my interests at the zen center.

Then Jamie, the person who lead the one day sit, gave this quote during his dharma talk (I’m paraphrasing): attachment: the flowers fall… avoidance: the weeds grow. And I pictured myself grabbing at a cherry blossom tree and all the little silky flowers falling off and then I pictured myself avoiding my feelings about teaching and the zen center and them just getting stronger and stronger.

Then I sat some more, in the afternoon, and then we had tea. And this is what I came away with: all I am doing is breathing. I can grasp at my identity as a teacher, attempt to hold on to feelings I have had in the past and try to maintain them even as I am changing. I can stick with my preconceived notions about what it means to be a practitioner at the zen center, refuse to accept that whatever that is might actually be a part of me. I can also just avoid this whole thing by spending less time at the zen center and more time at school. 

But if I grasp, if I hold on to the past, I will be simply shaking those dead blossoms on to the ground and will only be left with a bare branch. And if I avoid this by walking away from the zen center and whatever it is that is drawing me there, those weeds will sprout and grow and I won’t even be around to watch them and eventually they’ll take over my whole garden.

Then just sitting this afternoon, just breathing, I realized that really this is all just about breathing. Going to the zen center every morning to meditate is just breathing. Going to school and being present with the kids is just breathing. Sitting with this crisis, this change, this part of my life which is taking me instead of me taking it, is also just about breathing. I don’t really have any choice in the matter, except to breathe, to accept that this is what is happening in my life right now.

At the dharma talk on Saturday, the speaker (who, by the way, is a school teacher and a zen practitioner) talked about three kinds of faith: faith in your teacher because you think they know what they’re doing, faith in yourself because you’ve experienced what you’re being taught, and faith even though you don’t really know what either of you is doing (again, I’m paraphrasing).

I can’t say that I’m necessarily having faith that this is all going to work out. What I really want is to just be a teacher who practices compassion with her students. My good feelings at the One Day Sit still frighten me and I don’t know what I’m going to do if the zen center continues to draw me to it or if I lose interest in teaching. But the thing is, I can’t actually change these things, no matter how much I want to. I’m a living being and things affect me, change me, live me. If I fight them, then they really will control me, they’ll make me anxious and worried and sad. But if I sit there with them, actually see them as they are, then at least I’ll be with my life instead of fighting it.

Out of my control

 After having such great success with Girl 1 on Monday, I actually thought that my being compassionate with her was what supported her to be compassionate with others and herself. But then Tuesday rolled around and she went right back to being hurtful and combative. By Thursday, I was feeling pretty defeated because it seemed like her behavior had everything to do with her living situation and, as my coworker pointed out, “nothing to do with you honey….”

This can be both comforting and saddening at the same time. I know that my agreements included that I would meet my students where they were and accept that I can’t control the universe. But my big agreement was that I would see the beauty in my students and that in doing so, they would begin to see the beauty in themselves. So it’s hard for me to just say that I can’t do anything, that this is who she is, especially after seeing her ability to focus and get along with others on Monday.

Today Girl 1 arrived late, walked in the door with a scowl, and promptly threw herself face down on our class rug. I asked her if she wanted to go to the “cool out” chair, but she just lay there. I continued teaching and explained to the class that it looked like Girl 1 was having a bad morning so we might want to give her some extra space.  Then I introduced the “slates.” Slates are dry-erase boards and each kid gets one along with their own dry-erase marker. This is a huge deal for third graders, usually only teachers get to use white boards and they never get to actually have their own marker. Girl 1 decided to put away her backpack and go to her seat. She also came up and gave me a hug.

Then she totally bugged the kid sitting next to her during the spelling test, pretended like my marker was hers and refused to give it back to me, and then yelled at me when I wouldn’t let her go to the bathroom until I could find someone responsible to go with her. Her behavior at lunch was so horrendous that she’s off the yard for the week and she had to move to the back table because she grabbed the math test from one of her table mates and then lied about it.

But, she wrote her letter and addressed her envelope so that she was actually able to drop it in the mailbox before lunch. During “Room Time,” she actually played with another kid (NOT her best friend) and when someone else wanted to join them, she said, “I think we should let him help even though he wasn’t with us at the beginning.” Then she lied and said that she had given me the game that they were playing. I called her over and whispered in her ear, “You’ve been playing with two friends for the last half hour. You haven’t called anyone a name or bothered anyone. You don’t have to lie to make them like you, they already like you.” She didn’t say anything, just went back to cleaning up (and then promptly wrestled her best friend to the ground).

So, does it have anything to do with me? I have no idea. I know that she hugged me today. I know that she played with other kids today. I know that the anger that she walked in the door with seemed to be somewhat impermanent, but so did the great behavior that she demonstrated on Monday. I can’t control her; that I am aware of, far too well. But I can encourage her, and I can meet her with compassion and understanding. And maybe I need to be doing this without a goal, with the understanding that it’s just compassion and seeing her, not with the intent to change her.

z: Suffering- try just a bite…

  I know, again with the vegetables on your plate! If it didn’t work then, it ‘aint gonna work now, but here goes:

When I first learned about the whole concept of “embracing suffering” instead of avoiding it or rephrasing it, I thought it was a bad idea. I imagined myself walking into a heat wave of discomfort and uncertainty that would suffocate and trap me. Or I pictured myself being carried down the drain of sadness as if I were sucked in by that tornado thing that happens at the end of the bath when you drain the tub. I can’t remember what made me actually decide to try suffering but when I did it was nowhere near as bad as I thought. In fact, it was somewhat anti- climactic. But I think it was like this because I first experienced suffering in a really small and manageable situation: my car.

I was driving home from Trader Joe’s on a Saturday morning, turning right from a side street onto a major thoroughfare. I was totally focused on the cars coming from my left. When I let go of the break because the traffic had cleared, I found myself face to face with a pedestrian hitting the front of my car. Fortunately, he was, literally, hitting my car with his fist to let me know that I was about to hit him. I immediately mouthed an apology to him through my windshield. He just shook his head and kept walking. I turned right and went through my usual response to discomfort:

Rephrasing/ avoidance: Oh my gosh, I’m so lucky I didn’t hit him! I’ll bet this was a test or a trial or some mistake that I made so that some other time down the road I don’t end up hitting some new born kid or something. This is such a good thing that I learned this lesson now instead of actually hitting someone.

And then I thought about the guy and got mad at him: Who does he think he is? Why did he walk in to the crosswalk like that? I mean, come on, I was in the intersection, he shouldn’t have walked in to the crosswalk! And then he gets all mad at me, all high and mighty with this head shaking, like I am the bad guy. He’s the one who walked into the crosswalk!

And then, for some reason, I decided to actually experience my feelings:

Oh my gosh I almost killed someone. That was so incredibly scary, and sad. I could have killed someone. He would have died and I would have been responsible. That would have been awful. I can take someone’s life and I almost did.

And then I cried a little bit.

And then I stopped.

And then I thought, “Wait, maybe I didn’t totally feel that. That wasn’t much sadness for such a big event.”

So, I tried to feel a little more, to see if there was any sadness or fear in there that I was avoiding or something. But it was all gone. I had felt it. I guess I had felt it all up.

And I think that’s what I learned from the situation. All the anguish I experienced in rephrasing or avoiding the actual feelings of fear and sadness were way more uncomfortable than the brief tears that I shed when I actually felt my suffering.

Now this one was kind of lucky, my first experience was mild and tolerable. But because of that, it made me willing to experience suffering again, instead of avoiding it. I know you can’t really choose your suffering but if you’re worried about being engulfed by it, try experiencing just little bits of suffering first. Hopefully you’ll start to feel that it’s tolerable and, actually, that it passes much more quickly when you experience it. Also, by experiencing it, you only have to experience the suffering itself, not all the extra stuff you make up to avoid it.

First Class Meeting

 We had our first class meeting today. It went better than I thought. At first the kids were talkative and inattentive but once I explained that I would need to change their seats if they kept talking, they seemed more able to sit up and pay attention. When I asked them what worked for them, many of them said that they liked working with partners. When I asked what didn’t work for them, many of them said that they didn’t like the way that the cards couldn’t go back once they had been turned. I’m going to talk with them and try changing that rule, allow their cards to go back and forth between green and blue and see if that works. I guess that for me, I want them to be in charge of themselves and it feels like to me that if I keep changing them back and forth, then I’m managing them instead of them managing themselves. So, if they can stay on task and help each other without me managing them, then I’m fine with them switching back and forth. I’m even fine with getting rid of the cards altogether if they think they can do without them.

Today was also more mellow. I think I’m beginning to understand what I need to do. I had mentioned that on Tuesday, when they were talkative in line, I started to respond to them negatively, kind of scarily, like I was upset with them but then I realized that I can just as easily give them feedback on their behavior in a happy way. They don’t need me to be disappointed in them to get them to stop, they just need to be reminded that what they’re doing is not helping us right now. I’m also starting to examine my rules. For instance, the whole silence in the hallway thing is designed so that we don’t disrupt other classes. So, if they’re whispering but are still walking and not bothering anyone, it’s totally fine. I worry about being inconsistent, about confusing them by sometimes letting them whisper and other times making them be silent but at the same time, this feels more real and more fair. Sometimes it really is fine for them to whisper.

We did partner reading this morning. It’s always my favorite lesson the first week. The kids are engaged and always surprise me at how easily they can work together to find the answers to their predictions in the text.  This time, it was horrible. Their predictions were boring and the kids seemed completely uninterested in the story. Then they had an awful time just sharing a book with the person at their table. I was proud of myself for seeing this and changing up the lesson. Instead of sticking with the original lesson, I focused instead on just what it takes to partner read. I modeled it and gave them feedback on how they were doing. A few of them totally struggled at first so I had to step in to mediate but in the end, they were able to work it out. Because everyone finally mastered partner reading, I let them choose partners for their math games. Surprisingly, everyone played really well with their chosen partners- they didn’t goof around at all. It was so nice to see.

During PE, I held to my expectations that they could get into different groups: of two, of three, of four. It wasn’t easy but I stuck with them until they got it.  They had a really hard time just getting into groups of two because they kept searching for their friends instead of just going for who was nearest to them. I didn’t get mad at them when they didn’t get it, didn’t say I was frustrated, just gave them hints about how to do it. I think it was a good exercise for them. I think they felt like, as a class, they mastered something together and we ended up playing a game at the end.

I know that next week will be a struggle too but I’m going to try to be really patient with them and put myself in their shoes, really teach them what they need to know to be able to do the routines in our classroom. I’m going to go slowly and try to play more games with them where they mix up and get in to different groups with each other. They really need practice with that.

Compassion, not fear or embarrassment

 Today was a five cookie day. That’s not a good thing. It means that instead of eating my oranges and banana at lunch, I ate cookies, a lot of them, in an attempt to make myself feel better.

The morning was great. I was attentive to the kids, gave them feedback on their behavior in a way that didn’t feel manipulative, and they totally responded in kind. I even realized that I made up a rule just to save time, but in the end that rule kept kids from participating and having the opportunity to learn. One of the kids asked me about why we had the rule and I was totally honest with him and said that I was thinking about that rule too, and thought that maybe we should change it.  

Everyone worked in their math journal, when we needed extra time the early finishers did “challenge math” so that I was able to help others, and no one got upset because they had to wait for me to help them. We even corrected our math journals and literally celebrated the mistakes we made. Seriously, I danced every time someone made a mistake, the kids were calling out the mistakes they made and one kid even came up to me and said “I almost ran into the screen. I just thought you would want to know that I made a mistake.” And then we all did a little dance for him. They got through 25 spelling words for their spelling test and totally used the hand signals I taught them for “repeat the word” and “slow down.” Then they did what they always do which is to generalize the hand signals to our other lessons. I love this little thing about them- it makes me so happy that when I’m teaching some concept, they put up the hand signal for "s" to let me know that I’m teaching too fast for them.

But then things started to fall apart. We did our self portraits, which I thought was a good mellow activity for after the spelling test. I let them talk but then they started “goofing around.” They played with the mirrors I gave them, they argued over colored pencils, and a few of them just chatted away instead of coloring. The ones who did want to get their work done were annoyed by the ones who didn’t and so they complained. I called over the culprits but it was only a temporary fix. There are just some really playful kids and some serious kids and they don’t seem to want to mix.

Writing about it now I realize that they were just being third graders but at the time, I felt like they weren’t “getting things done” (something that I know is one of my fears and I should have paid attention to that) and I’m disappointed in the way I responded to them. I immediately tried to control them by giving them direct orders: “Stop playing with the mirror.”  “You may not talk.” And then we did a Science lesson which I truncated because we were running out of time and then when it was time to line up I kind of pointed out how horribly they were doing instead of asking them to reflect on their own behavior. After lunch was just as frustrating but I realize now that it’s because I was asking them to do a bunch of new tasks without even having taught them how to do them. In one lesson, they got new books, new journals, did a mini KWL chart, and then had to write about what they learned about the sun. They weren’t as engaged in the lesson as I thought and I started to threaten and change cards.

I guess that a lot of today was about my expectations of them and them not meeting them. After yesterday, I had this “mission” to really focus back on teaching, to really have the class be “back in order” and when they weren’t like that, I started freaking out. Instead of seeing what was actually going on: possible boredom at making their self portraits, confusion about new tasks (writing in journal, following along during read aloud, read aloud from Science book), I interpreted their behaviors through my own fears. 

I think I just need to remember that this is about me being present to them (and myself) and responding to them with compassion. I realized this morning, when they were talking in line, that I can give them feedback on their behavior without instilling fear in them. In the past when kids would break rules that I knew they understood, I’d look at them like they were crazy, and they’d get embarrassed and do what they were supposed to. But I can just as easily look at them with sweetness, with understanding, and they usually get the point. I can see their misbehaviors for what they are most of the time: kids being kids. Rules that are so important to me aren’t that important to them and they need reminders, not embarrassment or fear.  

Z: Keep your enemy (reality) close

 I mentioned in an earlier post that delusions had been kicking my butt lately. I also mentioned that I didn’t like it when reality came crashing down on me. Today I found an antidote for this: embrace reality. Well, maybe that’s going a little far. You don’t have to embrace reality, but you can be present for it. Here’s why: when you are present for the world around you, when you experience it just as it is, it can’t actually kick your butt and it can’t sneak up on you either. Reality can’t sneak up on you if you’re right there with it, ha ha ha! It can kick your butt, that’s true, but if you’re present for the butt kicking, you see that the butt kicking is coming from you. So, you can take a deep breath and step away from the foot.

Today I was present for my life for a full two hours. The best thing about it was that at the end of the two hours, I knew that it was real, that I had experienced it. I didn’t have to worry about it showing up later to shatter my delusions or to have some part that I wasn’t present for sneak up on me later. I know, two hours isn’t much but it was so incredibly reassuring to know that it couldn’t come back to haunt me later.

Here’s how it worked. I showed up for an event and got nervous about being there too early. Then I was present to my fears about being late, took a deep breath, acknowledged my issues around time, and focused on the event instead. Fancy that, my fears about being early went away. A couple of times during the lecture I worried about who was there, whether or not I fit in, and whether or not the speaker was noticing me. Each time I said, “Yep, that’s you. You think about these things. Those are thoughts.” And each time, I took a breath and focused on what was in front of me: the present. And again, those thoughts went away.

I went to another event, got nervous about intimacy, seriously considered leaving but then said, “These are your issues, you are suffering, don’t run away from it, stay present with it.” So I stayed, and it was totally fine: awkward and nervous at first but really sweet and informative by the end. Yep, a couple more things came up for me and I acknowledged them and actually learned a new thing about myself by experiencing something instead of getting mad at myself for it.

The only time I wasn’t present was when I went along with some stupid delusion I had of not attending an event so that I wouldn’t feel rejected. Earlier in the week I had decided that I could control others rejecting me by not attending an event in which they could reject me. Guess what happened? I got invited to the event. Had I been present to the moment, I would have said “Cool, let’s go!” Instead, I stuck with my delusion and went home instead. Basically, my delusions lead me to reject myself- lame! Okay, sorry, not supposed to judge. Anyway, up until then, I had been present. It wasn’t perfect or happy or euphoric, it just was. But at least it was, and I was with it.

Hope that helps…