Several times yesterday I felt great sadness and compassion for my body. This is likely the result of talking to my primary doctor about what I observe related to blood pressure and heart rate. She said the medications are not causing the things I am observing, so it makes her wonder about my heart. I am already scheduled to have a Coronary Artery Calcium Score test done next week.
The feelings of sadness and compassion for my body are like one would feel for “another” person. Awareness of all that my body has endured, plus a desire to care for it, fills me with great love.
The “Voice” assures me my heart is healthy.
The same “Voice” said it has assured me I was done with melanoma, and that has been the case.
At 2:00 am I received an email from a woman in our dharma study group. She is in her last trimester of pregnancy and she and her husband, their toddler son, and her parents are all ill with Covid. Two of Barbara Brodsky’s sons have tested positive and are quite ill. Another of my dharma buddies is also navigating.
I pick up crayons and a pen and begin to draw and write.
I draw a four-chambered heart, as observed in The Four-Fold Way: Walking the Paths of the Warrior, Teacher, Healer, and Visionary, by Angeles Arrien. Arrien is a cross-cultural anthropologist. She is a leading expert on native spirituality and shamanism. In The Four-Fold Way, she reveals the four archetypal principles of the Native American medicine wheel and how they can lead us to a higher spirituality and a better world.
Flowers spring up and I write a haiku (poem).
A Heart Haiku
Be strong, my dear heart
Be clear, like the open sky
Be full, like the moon
Opening can hurt
But being closed is not life
Break open, my dear heart
I write about beating. Beating all the odds. And that a heart breaks in only one direction: open. I write a an acrostic poem, in which the first letter (or syllable, or word) of each line (or paragraph, or other recurring feature in the text) spells out a word or message.
O – Only
P – Perfection
E – Exists
N – Now
I write a letter to my own physical heart.
Dear Heart,
I’ve taken you for granted most of my life. Please feel my gratitude for your constant beating — for moving blood through my body. For keeping time.
This day I pray for all hearts to awaken.
This day may all hearts be strong, clear, open and full.
May the heart of my body and the heart of this planet beat in harmony that all beings come to the end of suffering.
May all beings know peace.
Love, Debra
-
In a sutra called The Arrow, the Buddha gives a simile. He says arising anger or frustration feels like getting hit with an arrow. It hurts. Tension, pain. If you get hit with an arrow, will you be kind to yourself for being hit with an arrow? As soon as the thought comes up, ‘I shouldn’t have been hit by the arrow. Maybe I wasn’t careful. Why did this happen to me? Something’s wrong with me. I hate this.’ it’s just like getting hit with a second arrow. The first arrow was painful enough. The first arrow you couldn’t avoid, you didn’t see it coming. The second arrow you’re responsible for. And yet to say, ‘I’m responsible, so I am bad and I have to fix it,’ is just a third arrow.
