Meditation, Mindfulness, and Mental Health
In this lovely video, Buddhist nun and temple chef Jeong Kwan demonstrates how to cook mindfully.
“Cook slowly as if you are meditating. Korean temple food is like the journey people take to find themselves. The shiitake mushroom is also on a journey to find essence. It’s as if you and the mushroom are practicing together.”
–Temple Chef Jeong Kwan
“The Hug”
by Tess Gallagher
A woman is reading a poem on the street
and another woman stops to listen. We stop too.
with our arms around each other.
Suddenly a hug comes over me and I’m
giving it to you, like a variable star shooting light
off to make itself comfortable, then
subsiding. I finish but keep on holding
you. A man walks up to us and we know he hasn’t
come out of nowhere, but if he could, he
would have. He looks homeless because of how
he needs. “Can I have one of those?” he asks you,
and I feel you nod. I’m surprised,
surprised you don’t tell him how
it is – that I’m yours, only
yours, etc., exclusive as a nose to
its face. Love – that’s what we’re talking about, love
that nabs you with “for me
only” and holds on.
So I walk over to him and put my
arms around him and try to
hug him like I mean it. He’s got an overcoat on
so thick I can’t feel
him past it. I’m starting the hug
and thinking, “How big a hug is this supposed to be?
How long shall I hold this hug?” Already
we could be eternal, his arms falling over my
shoulders, my hands not
meeting behind his back, he is so big!
I put my head into his chest and snuggle
in. I lean into him. I lean my blood and my wishes
into him. He stands for it. This is his
and he’s starting to give it back so well I know he’s
getting it. This hug. So truly, so tenderly
we stop having arms and I don’t know if
my lover has walked away or what, or
whether the woman is still reading the poem…
Clearly, a little permission is a dangerous thing.
But when you hug someone you want it
to be a masterpiece of connection, the way the button
on his coat will leave the imprint of
a planet in my cheek
when I walk away. When I try to find some place
to go back to.
Video description: “All of us have deeply unhelpful inner voices inside us, dragging us down with criticisms and unfair accusations. Wisdom involves learning how to replace them with more benevolent guides.”
“We have to earn silence, then, to work for it: to make it not an absence but a presence; not emptiness but repletion. Silence is something more than just a pause; it is that enchanted place where space is cleared and time is stayed and the horizon itself expands. In silence, we often say, we can hear ourselves think; but what is truer to say is that in silence we can hear ourselves not think, and so sink below our selves into a place far deeper than mere thought allows. In silence, we might better say, we can hear someone else think.” –from The Eloquent Sounds of Silence by Pico Iyer
Just one of the juicy tidbits from the Poetica podcast “Silence.”
Video description: “Wu Wei is a key concept within Daoism – and refers to a serene acceptance of events. It’s a wisdom we’re very uninclined to remember in our own times.”
“Things to Do in the Belly of the Whale”
By Dan Albergotti
Measure the walls. Count the ribs. Notch the long days.
Look up for blue sky through the spout. Make small fires
with the broken hulls of fishing boats. Practice smoke signals.
Call old friends, and listen for echoes of distant voices.
Organize your calendar. Dream of the beach. Look each way
for the dim glow of light. Work on your reports. Review
each of your life’s ten million choices. Endure moments
of self-loathing. Find the evidence of those before you.
Destroy it. Try to be very quiet, and listen for the sound
of gears and moving water. Listen for the sound of your heart.
Be thankful that you are here, swallowed with all hope,
where you can rest and wait. Be nostalgic. Think of all
the things you did and could have done. Remember
treading water in the center of the still night sea, your toes
pointing again and again down, down into the black depths.
Via The School of Life: “We’re used to thinking of envy in very negative terms. But it’s an emotion we should learn to accept and – in a calculated way – learn from.”
“Sligo Creek Snowdrops” by Randal Mason. [Image: white flowers with drooping heads and upright green leaves emerge from a bed of dead leaves. A creek and some bare trees can be seen behind them.]
“Snowdrops” by Louise Glück
Do you know what I was, how I lived? You know
what despair is; then
winter should have meaning for you.
I did not expect to survive,
earth suppressing me. I didn’t expect
to waken again, to feel
in damp earth my body
able to respond again, remembering
after so long how to open again
in the cold light
of earliest spring–
afraid, yes, but among you again
crying yes risk joy
in the raw wind of the new world.
Exquisitely Human 