Introducing The Parenting Bodhisattvas

There are those who argue we should always keep the Dharma in the forefront of our minds; others proclaim there is no Dharma, and no mind in which to keep it. But, regardless of what is meant by "mind" and "Dharma", there is the mundane experience of remembering and dwelling on the Truth, and of experiencing our life as a manifestation of that Truth.

A person under stress is liable to forget that the life they are living is nothing other than the unfolding Dharma. Fortunately I have a husband who will kindly remind me--at 2:30 a.m. when the baby refuses to sleep--"This is your advanced spiritual practice."

It's easy to say, and a little cheesy to say, but it's also true. This is a spiritual practice, a lesson in applied bodhisattva-hood. You are literally giving your life to another being. Their supper is your body; their pain racks your heart; to relieve their suffering you would do anything; to see them smile and laugh is a prayer fulfilled. As a parent, your heart is torn open, and you wouldn't have it any other way.

You are also aware of not being in control. This has a painful side: your child may scream all night, and you may never know why--but there is also a joyful side: you do what you can, and somehow because of you but more likely in spite of you, a human being self-assembles. An intellect coalesces; a body grows; new preferences and abilities come out of nowhere. A baby does not need to be taught to suck or laugh or hide its head shyly. There is no instruction in chewing on your own toes, falling asleep, or clamoring for solid food. These things happen on their own, when the time is right, regardless of parental effort or opinion.

You could invoke biology to explain the birth and development of babies; you could employ the tools of sociology and psychology to tell you what happens to make some babies grow up into wounded adults, while others endure great pain and are mostly fine. But the experience of being a parent, of witnessing a new human flowering into itself, is something beyond what science is equipped to explain. There is a spiritual element to it--something magical, profound, and deeply right. As a parent, as a human, as a former baby myself, I experience energies that correspond to the archetypes known in Buddhist thought as Bodhisattvas.

Kwan Yin (Jap. Kannon, San. Avalokitesvara)

Kwan Yin is the great parent, the parent you secretly hope to be--and the one you sometimes are, impossibly, with her help. Her kindness and sweetness are boundless. When you feel your heart expanding as if it would burst, she is in you. She embodies the great love that parents and children feel for one another. She brings babies to parents, and parents to babies. She fulfills the unfulfilled; she makes love whole.

To be a baby is to suffer. The screams of the suffering children of the world find a deep hearing with Kwan Yin; she understands and does not avert from their grief. The healing balm she carries soothes the most searing hurt. She is a being composed of pure compassion. When pain overwhelms us, she holds us. When joy overwhelms us, she holds us. Like the extraordinary parent she is, she desires nothing but our safety and happiness, and the fulfillment of our greatest destiny. When we this for our children, and live from that place, we are Kwan Yin.

Jizo (San. Ksitigarbha)

Jizo guides the spirits of new children into this world, and watches over babies who depart from this realm. Nobody really understands where our life comes from, and nobody really understands where we go when we die. In the elation and the tragedy of these transitions, Jizo stands guard with steadfast kindness.

For all the children who enter the world only to find that their parents cannot care for them properly, Jizo is a comforter. For all the babies who cry alone in their crib, Jizo is there. For all the babies who are ignored or mistreated as they earnestly try to accomplish their destiny as little humans, Jizo is there. In the bewilderment and terror of a child in war, of a child abused, of a small life snuffed out or subverted, Jizo offers silent solace. There is no situation so terrible that Jizo's brave heart does not shine.

This Moment of Peace Brought to You by Zantac

For the past two weeks, the baby has not slept well. I can count on one hand the number of times he's gone down for more than 2 hours at a stretch. Or I could try--I might be too fatigued to make it that high.

Trapped gas, burps and farts, seemed to be a major contributor to the wakefulness. I have learned in the past few months that it's nearly impossible to burp a sleeping person or a screaming person. Moments when the baby is awake and not distressed have been few. You can't burp him because he's too busy yelling about the trapped air in his tummy. It's a very unpleasant cycle of suffering.

This morning, whilst searching online for new and better ways to burp my son, I came across a post that equated trapped air, "colic", and reflux.

I thought he was over his reflux. But perhaps this latest round of arching the back, pulling off the nipple, screaming, non-burping, waking up the minute he was laid down, etc....perhaps this was reflux.

There was some unused baby Zantac in the medicine cabinet. I put it to use.

Twenty minutes later I had a sleeping baby, and an hour later I had a relaxed and peaceful baby.

We walked all the way up to the Japanese Garden. I renewed my membership and we went inside. It was members-only hours, and we had the garden and the gardeners all to ourselves.

The baby was transfixed. Everything needed to be looked at very carefully. The light on the water. The way the water runs between the stones The braided straw insets on the sheltered bench that is my favorite seat. He could have stayed there all day.

A very sweet gardener with a gentle German accent saw me with the baby carrier. "Oh, is it hiding?" she asked. The baby peeked at her while we chatted. Her job that morning was watering moss. Doesn't that sound pleasant? Almost as pleasant as sitting with my baby, just looking at a waterfall.



Later in the day, I found myself lying on my back, feeding the baby, and...we started joking around, I swear.

The little guy looked at me with a glint in his eye, made a giant lunge for the boob, and we both started laughing. I wrinkled my nose. We cracked up. He made a funny sound. We lost it again. This went on for a while until he got hungry enough.

It's good to laugh, especially after these past couple weeks. It's good to laugh with the most precious 4-month-old in the world and feel that you are communicating with this little person.

He's in bed for the night now, and I'm praying for some sleep.

Exposed, and Night Falls

I have always kept a journal. I have never known why. And now there is this blog.

When I was ten years old, I thought I was preserving some unique slice of history for future scholars. At fifteen, I wrote to maintain sanity, sometimes writing continuously for hours, escaping my life by chronicling it. As the years wore on and memories faded, I would say that I wrote to remember the puzzling and the mundane aspects of my existence.

Lately, it has seemed to me that writing a blog about my life may be a fundamentally narcissistic undertaking. Who but myself is really interested in what I have to say? Am I not actually writing for others, and subconsciously trying to satisfy an imagined audience? And why do such a thing? Why not let life burn itself out, day by day, and vanish?

Because then I would not understand. I write to figure things out. To comprehend life a little better. To find patterns, to uncover insight, to record mistakes for future review. I aim to approach the truth, somehow, laying down thoughts while I am still blind to their significance, appreciating events only in hindsight. Beyond just writing in a journal or a blog, I have to read it. Otherwise nothing is learned.

And the truth wants to be shared. Which is why we have blogs, poetry, and Dharma centers. On the city bus, excerpts from poems are posted along the ceiling. They capture something widely accessible and yet effective. Good poetry is true. It has to pierce its own container to touch us, to mean something greater than it seems to. This is Dharma, humans grasping with words for a wisdom that pierces the fog: uncomfortable, necessary, and bracing like a cold wind. I suppose all art comes from this kind of attempt to find Truth.

The new Poet Laureate of the US, Kay Ryan, says there is nothing to be done in the face of her fame, so new and so awkward, because are all exposed anyway, all the time. And if she’s right--as I know she is--well then, those who blog are likewise exposed already, anyway, before they even begin typing. So what if we are seen? I once lived with someone who used to read my blog to find out what I was all about and how I was really doing. Perhaps I was seen more accurately through the blog than by the everyday eye.

And so we write. Medical students, Army snipers, religious evangelists, and proud parents all feel compelled to share something with the world as they try to make sense of what it means to be alive day after day. I know my life now is superficially less interesting than it was when I lived in a startup Zen monastery. My posts are less immediately affecting than they were when I first moved to the city. They are certainly less frequent then they once were. They show symptoms of mental fatigue. But there I am. This is what there is.

---

Tonight the fading light made the blowing leaves on the trees glow richly green. Later, the leaves danced grey in the fading light. Breath came to mark the passage of time; leaves and mind did not separate. When the baby stirred, his skin seemed molded from porcelain, a tiny ideal come to life. He blindly searched for food from the depths of sleep, arching and raising his brows over closed eyes like a little drunkard seeking the sweet taste of life.

It is dark now, and the leaves blow still, rustling invisibly in the dark, beyond the drawn blinds.

A Brush With De Quervain's

Medicine is one of those fields in which very little is charming. Yet medical conditions are often named for their discoverers, which never fails to seem quaint and earnest. As if a particular predicament did not exist before it was recognized by Dr Down or Dr Alzheimer and shared with a grateful world.

I have no idea who De Quervain was, but I am absolutely certain that the condition that bears this doctor's name has been around since time immemorial.

Before "De Quervain's" became real to me, it manifested as a curious and painful stiffness in the wrists. As the baby writhed and grunted and signaled readiness for a nighttime feeding, I would stand by the bassinet doing some grunting of my own, still mostly asleep, unable to mobilize my hands and reach for the child. I would eventually stretch them enough, or wake up enough, to reach into the bassinet and lift the baby, ignorantly utilizing the same rotten body mechanics that got me into the predicament in the first place.

This continued under the radar for weeks, and the baby grew, until the pain, and not just stiffness became a common fixture of the waking hours. I knew I should not lift the baby so much--but how can you even attempt such a thing? Looking around the internet, I learned that new mothers and grandmothers often have this kind of wrist pain, which resembles carpal tunnel pain but is restricted to the tendons at the base of the thumb. De Quervain's was real, belatedly.

I began to lift the baby with a neutral, not bent wrist. But a hard bump the size of a lentil grew under the skin of the wrist, below the thumb. The right wrist now hurt all the time, not just when I was hoisting the baby in a contorted manner. Pressure on it of any sort was excruciating. I tried to immobilize it with a bandage and woke up one night to find myself tearing at it, and the wrist burning with pain.

Finally, I could not lift the baby much at all. I would awkwardly pick him up using my forearms rather than my hands, and wretchedly try to maneuver him around. Or I would wait for my husband to step in and lift, rotate, and tuck my son's body into the desired position.

I had resisted splints because pressure on the wrist was so excruciating, but finally I was convinced that, since my physical misery was only increasing, I should give them an honest try. At the low point, unable to turn a doorknob or pick up a pillow, I finally splinted.

The splint was a battered neoprene one covered with mortar and speckled with paint. It's the grit between the tiles of our bathroom floor, the color of our kitchen. I padded the inside with foot-pampering gel toe-spacers, to take pressure off the lentil-like growth, now visible beneath the skin. I put this ugly contraption on. The relief was immediate. I refused to take it off until I had a fresh, unsoiled but otherwise identical model, to wear.

Two days later, my wrists are fine. I wear the brace at night and intermittently during the day. I avoid all pressure on a bent wrist. Since the flaring pain is gone, I am functioning well. Most interesting of all, the lentil-like growth, which two days ago was a small mountain pushing whitely outward against skin and vein, has now completely vanished.

I move my body and employ my wrists with great care. The baby has gained even more weight; he is a solid little turkey of boy-meat, more charming and engaging every day. The online descriptions of De Quervain's are depressingly short on successful treatments (acetaminophen, surgery). In this case, what saved me was listening to my body and being curious and desperate enough to rig up a solution that worked. I wish I had been more careful from the beginning.

Fortunately, the way karma seems to work, you keep encountering your issues in various forms until you resolve them. Today the wrists, tomorrow, who knows?