Mark Coleman: Monday Night Talk: The Poignancy and Tenderness of Change

So, as many of you know, I am a big lover of the wild. In fact, my work is called Awake in the Wild. And I spend as much of my time outside in nature, preferably in the wilderness, in the mountains, in the forests. And I just spent a week, last week, teaching this wonderful wilderness dharma center called Vaisitos, up at 9,000 feet in the New Mexico mountains. And it was a beautiful autumnal week. It was cold and all the aspens were turning gold, all these shimmering gold coins on the trees. Very beautiful, very wild. And the reason I do those retreats is because, well, when I love being out in nature, but also because it's a profound place to meditate and to both cultivate awareness, but also cultivate a very deep sensitivity and receptivity to nature. And to discover how much nature is a beautiful and profound teacher. And so I want to share some things, some reflections from what nature is teaching us. And of course, this is not just teachings from nature, but it's everywhere. I'll start with a couple of quotes. One from A Chan Man. A Chan Man was a very renowned Buddhist meditation teacher in Thailand, back in the last century. And he said, after ordination, my teacher took me wandering in the forests and on the mountains. And I learnt the dharma. The dharma is a word for Buddhist teachings, but also is a word for truth or natural law. So he said, I learnt the dharma from the trees, from the grasses, the rivers, streams, caves and rocks. I listened to the sounds of birds and other animals and their teachings. So what does it mean to learn the dharma, the truth from the trees and the grasses and the rivers and the caves and the rocks and the mountains? And then his, one of his main students, A Chan Man, who was teacher of Jack Cornfield and other teachers here, he wrote this. He said, whether a tree, a mountain or an animal, it's all dharma. Everything is dharma, as in truth or natural law. Where is the dharma? Dharma is nature. If one sees nature, one sees dharma. If one sees dharma, one sees nature. Seeing nature, one knows the dharma. As in it's not separate. When we're outside, when we're in nature, nature is revealing the way things are. Reveals the way things are about life, about ourselves, about reality. And so I want to point to one particular thing that's very obvious when we're outside in nature and that is the truth of change. And of course we all know things change. And we're in the season of autumn. And autumn is perhaps the most poignant sort of time for reflection on change. We're coming up to Samhain, Celtic, holiday, but acknowledgement of this time of year. We're coming up to all Hallows Eve, now known as Halloween. We're coming up to the day of the dead. This is a time when many cultures sense the veil between the living and the dying as thin and more able to kind of connect with spirits in the other world. But for me I think autumn is a time of poignancy. It's a time of reflectiveness. As the earth and the northern hemisphere, anyway, the land is turning inwards. The air is getting cold. The light is getting more slanted. And there's a sense of invitation to turn inwards and to slow down. Not that we slow down in this crazy culture, but there's an invitation to slow down. And so I'm curious for you when you look at the... And there's not that. I mean in California, the autumn, the fall is not quite as dramatic as maybe in New England or in certain parts of Europe or other parts of the world. But there's some sense of trees turning and leaves falling. And they know that certain trees, the maples and the oaks, some oaks, kind of coloring. And now it's up in the mountains. In New Mexico it was just like the whole ground was covered in these golden coins of aspen leaves. It's very beautiful. And there's something that speaks to a cellular memory of time passing, seasons turning, life returning to the earth. And so just a reflection for yourselves of what does this season mean to you? What does it evoke for you? The season of autumn, of fall? Anybody? What does it bring up for you? Season, autumn? Word or two? Yeah? Get ready for winter? Yeah? Yeah? What about for you? New beginning. New beginning, alright. So for you it's beginning, not endings, okay? What else? Well just think for yourself. I use the word poignancy. And you know we, a lot of migrating birds leave, some migrating birds arrive. But there's a sense of going inwards, the trees pull their sap down back into the earth, they shed their leaves. So I was teaching a retreat here. This was a couple years ago now, it was a nature retreat. I teach a lot of nature retreats here now. And I was helping to give one of these talks like I'm giving now. And I, you know, as a Dharma teacher, meditation teacher, I've been doing this for a while now, so I'm a bit tired of my own voice. And so I was walking down the hill, and I was walking past these trees, just past in this car park, and I was probably oaks. And I asked them, I said, what would you, what would you, what would you, if you had to give the Dharma talk tonight, what would you have to say, you know? An interesting question to ask, you know, what would the trees, what would these trees have been around for decades, some of them centuries, what would they have to teach us, you know? A lot of things they teach us, you know, the aspen trees and any deciduous trees, they're teaching us about letting go. They're teaching us about surrender. They're teaching us about patience. They're teaching us about how to stay steady, even though they don't know when the next rains are coming. And here the mosses on the trees have to be very patient. They have to wait six months between the spring rains and the winter rains. So I'm going to share this, it's not quite, well, I'm going to share this anyway. This is what I heard them say. It's called, I called it the earth suter. It's a dhassabhai heard. Without disturbing the silence, she speaks. And they just, the earth speaks. You, you, you always welcome. Come outside and explore and play. Get curious. Why seclude yourself indoors. Open the window. Step out the door. Head into the grassy meadows, soft hills and quiet groves. You live in a perpetual homecoming. You are home, a part of everything here. Every branch, leaf, fin and wing are your kith and kin. Behold your swallow sisters and earthen brothers. Get low to the grounds. Get low to the ground. You have roots that touch every living thing. Look around. Everything grows according to its own nature. There's no perfection here. Just life expressing itself perfectly. You're not a mistake. Can't you see your wild eccentric expression is how I've wanted to move through you. Yes, I'm always moving through you. Listen to how you're embedded. How the soil is baked into your bones. The streams course through your capillaries. You're my lungs taking in the air as I sense your footsteps upon me. Remember you're always known, not even once for a moment, apart. So that's what I heard that night. Maybe even if you go outside and you see the moon rise and see what the trees have to share with you. Maybe they whisper to you in silence. Maybe you don't hear anything. Maybe they say, you're all right. You're okay. Maybe they say you're welcome. But rarely do we feel judged when we go outside. We generally feel accepted. Nature's doing its thing. Wild, eccentric, beautiful. And it has room for everything. It has a lot of room for diversity and complexity and imperfection, which is all of us. So, as I said what I want to speak to you tonight, the teaching that's most obvious when we go outside in nature and spend time in nature is everything is dynamic. Everything is connected. Everything is in a constant state of flux. Even though sometimes it can look static, a mountain can look static, trees can look stable. But if we look a little closer, we can see and feel the dynamism, the fluidity, the aliveness. Whether it's in the moment of, you know, if you sit outside you'll feel the flux of sounds, of birdsongs, of insects, of silence, of rustling, the movement of wind in the trees, the swaying of the grasses, it's just this alive landscape. Very different than indoors. Indoor things are quite static. And our senses tend to go to sleep because it's static. So, I plan to talk about this theme on the retreat I just taught last week. And when you think about change, about how everything is changing and therefore ephemeral in a certain way, dynamic in a certain way, but therefore also unreliable in a certain way, uncertain in a certain way. If everything's changing, then where do we go for certainty? What's reliable? People change, moods change, bodies change, governments change, thank God. Seasons change, weather changes, things come and go. Everything comes and goes. And there's beauty in that. For me, seeing these golden aspen trees and then seeing them just swept off the trees and done to the ground, this hearing the beautiful sound of birds that are so fleeting, the flowers that come and go. A lot of beauty and joy in change. Watching these cumulus clouds that we're starting to have now because it's fall, watching the waves or the water flow. Beautiful. We get a lot of delight from change, from the beauty of dynamism. And of course, without change, no growth, no transformation. If things didn't change, we'd be stuck. Imagine right now if you just, everything stayed the same. You stayed the same and you're stuck with however you are in this moment. And that's it. I mean, maybe that's okay. Maybe it's not okay. I mean, this whole path, the whole path of spiritual practice and development is all based on the fact that we can change, we can grow, we can develop meditation. The word that is often used in the tradition, back in the day, is bhavana, which means cultivation. We're cultivating qualities in meditation. We're cultivating mindfulness, focus, attention, awareness, kindness, compassion, wisdom. It's not static. We're cultivating. We're growing those seeds. But what I really want to speak to tonight, and this is very much present on the retreat I just led, as well as the beauty that can come from seeing change and dynamism, and as well as feeling the possibility of change and growth, there's also a lot of poignancy and tenderness that comes from the reality of change. And that's also kind of baked in. And it's part of being human. And it's part of the tenderness of being human and the vulnerability of being human. And for me, autumn is a wonderful reminder of that. You know, however beautiful the summer was, however full and alive, and it changes. Nature, the cycle, seasons, there's a necessary movement. I think about if we had a vase of silk flowers over here and a vase of real flowers over here, the silk flowers might look as pretty as the freshly cut flowers, but I imagine most of us would prefer the freshly cut flowers. There's a kind of realness and there's a beauty knowing, there's a beautiful word in Japanese, it's called mono-no-owari, which means the poignancy of knowing that whatever's beautiful won't last. And flowers are a great expression, right? I grow flowers in my garden, I buy flowers. It's kind of silly, they last what? Three days, five days. And then they die and wither and get smelly. But we love that beauty. And then we stick them in the compost for them to be new life. But, yeah, so in Buddhist teachings, we point to a lot of different things in part of Dhamma, part of the way things are, but it's very easy to forget the human response to that. And that's what I want to speak to. So one of the definitions of what... The Buddha taught, he was raised with a lot of privilege and comfort. And his father tried to protect him from the harsher realities of life. And at some point, when the Buddha came of age, he began to see a bit more clearly. And the mythology of it is he's out with his attendant in a chariot and he's just sort of whatever chariots do, they wander around, they drive around in chariots, they gallop around the countryside or whatever the town. And they come across an old person. And the Buddha had been so shielded, he'd never seen an old person. And he said to his attendant, he said, what's that? And his attendant's like, what do you mean what's that? It's an old person. And the Buddha says, well, is that going to happen to everybody? He's like, yeah, it happens to everybody. Well, that's a downer. I mean, you probably didn't say that, but anyhow. That's what doesn't say that in the mythology, anyhow. And then he go on and then they come across this person who's really sick in the street. And then the Buddha had again been sheltered from sick people. And he said to his attendant, what's that? And the attendant said, well, it's someone who's sick, really sick. And the Buddha said, is that going to happen to me? Is that going to happen to everybody? He's like, yeah, that's just part of life. And then they carry on. And this time the Buddha sees someone who's dead. In India, you often see people who are dead or in a procession, they're openly carried down to the burning gaps or the cemetery, funeral grounds. And the Buddha says, what's that? And his attendant said, well, that's someone who's died. And the Buddha says, well, is that going to happen to me? Is that going to happen to everybody? And that guy says, yeah, of course it happens. Everything dies, everything passes. But this time the Buddha is quite, you know, quite impacted. And then lastly they see, they come across a mendicant, a monk, a spiritual practitioner. And the Buddha says, what's that? What are they up to? So that's someone who's dedicated their life to spirituality, to waking up, to trying to understand life and death. And that planted a seed in the Buddha. Because later he reflected, if everything, if birth, the nature of birth leads to old age, to sickness and to death. And if I, with all my privilege and wealth and all of that, if I'm not protected from that, then what's the point? Maybe these spiritual seekers have the answers, or at least have some way to deal with that reality. So who knows whether that actually happened, you know, in that kind of way, or whether, as it happens for us at some point. We wake up to the fact that these bodies are fragile, they're vulnerable, they're subject to sickness, to aging, to decay and to death. And no one escapes. And that's a sobering reality when we really take that in. Most of our life and most of our culture is trying very hard to ignore that reality. That's why Netflix subscriptions keep going up. And whatever kind of subscription we'd rather watch Netflix than face the reality of these existential truths. So I was visiting some dear friends of mine in New Mexico after my retreat. And they have a very, very, very sweet, one of those little lab, lab-bredore poodles, you know, that kind of can sit on your lap, they're just, it's like a teddy bear. It's so freaking cute. It's like ridiculously cute. And I got to know it when I was very young. Like, it was really like a few months old. So really bonded with me. So every time it sees me, it just goes, apeshit. It just goes, you know, dogs can do this. You know, jumps and... But he's now 15 and a half. And he's losing his sight. He's already lost his hearing. And they thought he almost died with a kidney infection, but they healed that. And now he's really slowed down. He still got excited when he saw me once he smelt me and realized it was me. But he's really declining. And I was really happy to see him because they thought he would die in the spring with this kidney infection and he didn't. And they really helped him live a healthy, older life. He's now 104 in human years. But he probably won't last this year. And they, of course, love him to bits as we do love our animals. And it's very tender and it's sad. And he's had a great life. She's had a great life. It's just she, not a she, called curry. And they're just hanging out with this. That reality is like, and then my friend Keith says, Yeah, every week I see a decline. Every week less function. Every week less energy. And so just watching this very beloved being, you know, just live their last, maybe probably last weeks. And that's just how it is. You know, we, you know, many of you probably have animals. I have two adorable fluffy kitties. They're now six. They managed to survive not getting eaten by coyotes and bobcats and run over and every night they come in. I'm like, okay, you're still here. Good. And it's tender, you know, just, you know, and I'm starting with the example of pets because pets are animals are really, for the most part, really easy to love. It's very pure. And then I just found out I was with a friend of mine today and his dog of 16 years just passed a couple of days ago. And he showed me photos of him lying the last night and they slept together. And his son who, who's now 20, you know, just his whole life was with that dog. And it's very tender. It's very poignant. And so when, you know, when I, you know, in Buddhism, you know, there's a lot of talk and pointing to the reality of change, the reality of impermanence. And it's talked about sometimes quite glibly. Oh, like everything changes, the nature of things, blah, blah, blah. But we also have to hold how it lands in the heart. Right. And of course, you could say, you know, I'm talking about that animals right now, but of course, I'm sure all of you have known people that are now not here with us, died. Many of you lost many loved ones, parents, spouses, siblings, children, the most painful loss. And so, you know, life is, is asking of us to meet it with tenderness, with kindness, with love, because life tenderizes. Anybody feel tenderized by life? And just this is, there's so many ways that, you know, so as I was saying that, maybe I didn't finish that sentence because I meander a little bit, but so the word for dukkha, the word for suffering is dukkha. And one of the definitions of dukkha, suffering, is difficult to bear, difficult to bear, difficult to hold. And intellectually, the truth of change is, like most concepts, somewhat easy to hold, live with. But the actual experience of change, the experience of loss, is often very difficult to hold, you know, which is why we often run away from it, suppress it, distract ourselves, check out, get busy, turn to substances, eat a lot of ice cream, whatever it is, not to feel that tenderness. That's why we turn to substances, why we, you know, all the different ways we numb out in our culture is really great at giving us a lot of different ways to check out. But of course, that doesn't work, right? You know, these teachings, as I mentioned, in the beginning of the meditation, you know, mindfulness has both the quality of attention and also the attitude. And when I say attitude, I mean, how are we in relationship to experience? So with change, how are we in relationship to change? And of course, there's not one answer to that because some things are easy, okay to be with, some things are difficult. I was leading this retreat, this nature retreat, and we were having a wonderful time up in the mountains. I don't know about wonderful time, but we were having a time in the mountains and it was everything, it was good, bad, and everything else. And the first day we got a call, we were up in the wilderness, we had a kind of emergency cell phone, and somebody's husband had a heart attack. So this person had to leave to attend to her husband. The second day we got another call, I said, oh dear, what's this going to be? And someone's ex-husband had just died. She'd fathered four children with this person. So she left the retreat. The third day we got another call, and this is really not looking good. And someone's brother had just died in his sleep, unexpected. She chose to stay on the retreat. I've got a phone call on day four, and this wonderful man, Rudy, who