Dalai Mama
Written By Catherine Newman
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No Time Like the Present
One of Zen's most revered teachers, Thich Nhat Hanh, a Vietnamese monk and author of Buddhist classics such as "Peace Is Every Step," offers a different strategy for mindfulness. For Zen monks, the ringing of the temple bells is a reminder "to come back to the present moment." Nhat Hanh would have us hear an imaginary bell of mindfulness in all our moments, including — or especially — the most challenging ones. The next time you find yourself stuck at a red light or in a traffic jam, he advocates, don't fight it or flip anybody the bird (my image, not his). And so when I recently found myself at the doctor's office with my sick 5-year-old, I tried to stop worrying about missed work, the coughing teenager with the crusty rash who was leaning against my chair, and the too-hot child in my lap.
"This is a bell of mindfulness," I thought — a blessing in disguise. And so we read "The Cat in the Hat" and talked about the snow-laced tree branches we could see out the window ("like skeletons"), and I felt the luck of knowing this child, of being with him, sick or no. A bell of mindfulness. (Of course, moments later when he barfed into the hood of my jacket, it was like a gong of mindfulness going off right by my ear and leaving me deaf for a week. But still.)
And I had to listen for that bell again, as we were leaving an hour later, when my child stopped at the edge of the parking lot to watch snowmelt trickle into a drain. When people say, "Kids are so Zen," this is what they mean: the way they appreciate every tiny miracle of the here and now. And, ironically, it's this very quality that tends to drive parents crazy, even wannabe Zen parents like me — the way kids stop to play in the sand on the path even as you're trying to herd them to the beach itself. But where was I rushing to now? As I stood outside the doctor's office, I had to wonder. There was lunch to be made, sure. My jacket to put in the washing machine. The words "strep throat complications" to Google.
But really, what was going to be better than this winter sun, the tinkling sound of the water, Ben's smile as he squatted over the drain to listen? If you can't lick 'em, join 'em. I squatted down next to him, felt the wind in my face, and remembered to smile. And maybe it wasn't very Zen of me, but I felt pretty pleased with myself.
Am I always this successful? Um, no. Like any meaningful practice, mindfulness takes patience and energy, and I am not always patient or energetic. Believe me, my mind has been only as inclined to get into shape as the rest of my postpartum self. So I still tend to space out playing Hi Ho! Cherry-O, or when two dozen stuffed animals are marrying in the Moonie-style weddings my children favor. When the kids spill milk or glue, I sometimes snap at them instead of taking a deep breath and showing them how to clean it up. I feel panic-stricken during the chaos of the dinner hour, when one child cries for help in the bathroom ("The toilet paper is wound around my shoe!") while the other crawls around under the table eating old beans and the pasta boils over and the phone rings. So many bells of mindfulness — a veritable cacophony of mindfulness, and who can even think straight?
Heaven on Earth!
In these moments, when I am stressed out or stretched thin or when my very last button has been pushed, awareness can feel like yet another demand on my strained multitasker, even though I know better. Life unfolds only one moment at a time, whether or not you're paying careful attention. And, as the Kabat-Zinns remind us, "Such moments count. They add up to a childhood, and a life."
Modern life might tend to encourage the secular version of a pie-in-the-sky mentality — you'll be happier, it promises, on the weekend or in a bigger house or at the mall or after you retire — but what the Kabat-Zinns are advocating is heaven on earth. When we become aware of this, "Might it not suggest how precious the time we do share together with our children is, and how to hold our essentially fleeting moments with them in awareness? Might it not influence how we hug and kiss our children, and say good-night to them, and watch them sleep, and wake them in the morning?"
Last night I lay in bed with my children as they were falling asleep, and I stopped making lists in my head. I stopped fretting about money and work. I stopped wishing the kids would fall asleep already so I could be somewhere else, doing something else. Instead I noticed the dark crescents of their eyelashes. I watched as the moonlight turned their cheeks to white apricots. And I felt my heart swell with joy and gratitude. It was utterly ordinary. And utterly extraordinary. It was an everyday blessing.
About the Author
While working on this piece, Catherine Newman was overheard saying to her kids, "I can't right now, I'm thinking about mindfulness," before she was seen slapping her forehead and bending down to pay attention. She is the author of the memoir "Waiting for Birdy."
