“The seed of suffering in you may be strong, but don't wait until you have no more suffering before allowing yourself to be happy.” ― Thích Nhất Hạnh
Somewhere along the line being present became synonymous with being austere. Peace is often misunderstood as a kind of absence. Not just the absence of suffering or anguish, but of emotion, individuality, aberration. In the peace-adjacent space of austerity we easily police bodies (so unruly!), we fear illness and injury (extremely inconvenient!), we disdain mortality, ours, and especially others (ever gotten gravely ill and discovered who among your friends and family is capable of speaking to you despite the fact that you are now ‘sick’?)
We signal our peacefulness through other peace-like words; ‘pure’ and ‘clean’. We proclaim our transcendence via digestive health, clean colons, (steamed Yonis) and antioxident boosted immune systems. We make instagram post about what we are ‘giving up’. We create lists of ways to change ourselves and call them ‘goals’. We spend endless hours, days and years preparing for our future calm, our future joy, our ‘future present’.
Absence is not rest. Control is not peace. Our current bodies, our current minds, our current moment in space and time are beyond the scope of our mortal abilities and upright-ape-hominid-brains to crack and control, (fun and even satisfying as it is to try). They are also fully available to us, as they are right now, whole and peacefully.
Every summer since the pandemic brought me upstate for more than a long weekend but nearly two years of life altering city-slicker goes to the country experiences, Pigeon (my sweet chihuahua who passed away last year) would ride with me to my farm CSA pickup. I have memories of these drives etched in my nervous system: The car windows are open to the heat of late July. The flowers I picked (part of the CSA bounty) nestle in Pidgeon’s small-dog booster seat. He chomps the stems and lets the wind blow his ears. He lays against them, the sun warming his belly, a big tongue-out smile on his face. Every so often he snuffels his nose into the loose bouquet or chomps a carrot I’ve tucked into his seat.
His ability to sink so deeply into the moment makes it easy for me to drop-in too. No matter what is on my mind, I join him in these minutes of pure contentment. I let the wind blow my hair, tossing curls like flapping dog ears. I reach over and pet him, ask him in the voice reserved for him, ‘why’s he eating the flowers?’ I feel the heat of the sun, I smell the fields as the race past the windows. I sit in my body. I am in the present moment with myself, with him, with the cosmos that’s we’ll never fully know or understand.
These are moments of grace. They are pure presence. I hold them in my heart like gems.
The present is sensual. And yet we are told that the only way to peace is to strip away; our thoughts, our emotions, our needs, our wants (our hungers, our desires). I’ve never met creatures more capable of accepting and EXPERIENCING the present than dogs. Senses are a dog's whole existence. (does presence only count if you have the ability to suffer existential angst before and after it? no. Our suffering is not so special as to give us hierarchy in contentment.)
The idea that Peace begins with lack means clients tell me they can't meditate because 'they can't stop thinking'. Spa spaces look like drafts for Scandinavian kitchen show rooms. Earth tone color schemes and a distinct lack of flair (ie every lobby ever) become synonyms for soothing.
The representation of this utterly peaceful person embodied always looks the same to me. A kind of gamey, white haired older lady who wears linen, eats mung beans but isn't Asian, and still does yoga every day. I'm not sure she really exists but I think a lot of expensive bathing suit cover-ups have been sold in her aspiration.
Not only is this representation of CALM distinctively white - it is - as so much of (all?) Judeo-Christian white culture is - hugely reductive of the depth of human experience. We can only be peaceful if we are QUIET, STILL, MONK-LIKE in our unassuming habits, GENTLE in our unobtrusive appearance...SPARING in our tastes.
What does this say for Color - a kind of visual egotism? Flourish - self fulfilling chaos? Curve - the aberration of order? And all the things that can fall under those categories .. color: non whiteness, flourish: queerness, or embodied sexuality, like a woman who has agency… curve: again, so often, non-whiteness, fatness, sex...
There’s fear in this depiction of ‘Peace’, as though dropping into our animals bodies will cause all chaos to emerge. We end up chasing absence instead of balance, aestheticism instead of calm. What if instead, dropping into our animal bodies actually honored the balanced, sensual, relaxed beings we already, naturally, are.. or at least could be, with far less effort?
Meditative peace is not having no thoughts. The peace is letting them pass without further judgement or commentary. There can be no expectation we will stop being ourselves or stop thinking (that would be being dead). Not being alive and who we are is not the point. The peace is that we stop trying to be anything or anyone else.
Feel your body. Lay on a bouquet and chomp the stems. Get your belly rubbed. Wriggle on your back in the sand. The more you drop into that body the more you can trust its boundaries. You won't suddenly become a wanton person wandering the streets, tearing at your hair, leaving all civilization behind. You'll just wear clothes that make you feel beautiful (and comfortable!) or go for walks with your shoes off.
Fearing that saying yes to your body might result in never being able to say no again is not an invitation for peace, it’s a deep deep distrust of yourself. Looking for peace by saying no all the time is not always discipline, it's sometimes just sad. We deny ourselves too often because white-linen-lady has been our wellness #inspo. Absence is not peace. Lack of change or challenge is not transcendence. And we cannot predict or control the world around us, our future, or even our own bodies, no matter how desperate, no matter how hard we try. We can open the windows. We can let the wind touch our hair. We can lay on our flower bouquets and feel the sun.
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