Author: SomatiCat

Emptying

Posted on by SomatiCat

Bowl

A man had contracted a then incurable disease and set out for a journey to find a cure. He traveled all over the Western world to find a medical doctor who could cure him. When he realized that nobody could, he started to knock on the doors of philosophers and great thinkers of the West to find out the meaning of the life. Nobody could give him THE answer.

Eventually the illness wasted him and he decided to go home to die. On his way back he met a yogi on board. The yogi said, “Follow me if you want the answer.” He followed the yogi to India without even asking where.
The man waited for the yogi to teach him the meaning of life day after day. Two months passed in vain. Finally, one day he walked up to the yogi and asked, “When do you teach me?”

The yogi answered, “I’ve been ready since the day we arrived here, and waiting for you to be ready day after day.” The man did not understand, since he was eager to learn from the first day.

Then, the yogi told the man to fill a bowl with cold water and bring it to him. He did. Then the yogi told him to pour hot water in the bowl. The man objected, “Any man from civilized world should know if you pour hot water in a bowl filled with cold water, it will overflow.”

The yogi said, “Now, you understand what I mean.”

I try to keep my bowl empty.  Will you?

You can find the original story in 天空先生座談 by  宇野千代

People love to teach what they think they know.  When somebody start to teach what they know and what I don’t know, I listen.  Free pearls to pick up.  I appreciate and take some with me.  I hold it dear till they become part of me.  A good teacher gives only what I could take.

Some have asked me to teach.  When I teach, many start to teach back to show what they think they know.  They are not ready to learn.  I stop teaching.  They don’t get pearls.

About the photo: Taken at Smithsonian Museum of Natural History.

Zen of Cherry Blossom

Posted on by SomatiCat

The falling cherry blossoms,

The remaining cherry blossoms are also

The cherry blossoms to fall.

 Haiku by Ryokan Osho

Every year I think this might be the last time to see the cherry blossoms fall.  This particular type of cherry trees only blossom for a week in the spring.  They open and will be gone in a week. If you miss it, you won’t see it till the next year.  And who could be sure that you will be there to see the cherry blossom fall next year.

So I breathe in the almost colorless color of petals, listen to the sound of silently falling petals, and watch the air tinted with millions of white grey pink petals.

This could be the last time.

It’s about

Mortality.

impermanence.

The transient nature of our existence.

That’s exactly why it’s precious.

Love and appreciate your life now.  It could be the last time you see it.

The dog enjoyed the spring day with his full existence.  He is not with us anymore.

Mindfulness of Hannibal

Posted on by SomatiCat

I’ve learned mindfulness of eating from Hannibal Lecter.

I have been an omnivore for the most of my life.  I am still.  Once in a while I cut out certain food following the fad diet of the day, but never followed through. I have vegan friends.  I also have Paleo friends.   I don’t mind what they eat or don’t eat, so long as they don’t force me how they eat.

freshrabbitWhen my dog passed, I stopped eating meat.  It was my mourning.   I never consider dogs and cats as meat.  They are individuals with names.  If a dog is an individual, then what about a cow?   What about rabbits?   On Saturdays In Union Square green market, rabbit meat is sold.  Across the street in Petco, pet rabbits adoption event is going on.  Where does the line between friends (some call them pets) and food lie?

So I just stopped eating the four-legged out of respect to my late four-legged partner of 14 years.  I didn’t specified the term.  I simply chose to go back to the indigenous diet of my old country and see how it would go.  As a Buddhist country, eating four-legged animals was spoken of as taboo.  Fish, fowl, and properly hunted game meat were allowed.

My first “oops” happened when I ordered turkey club sandwich.  It had bacon bits.

Since it was not for religious or medical reason but my personal choice, I didn’t avoid bacon bits.  Wasting the life already given up for the sake of respecting a dog’s life didn’t make sense.

Before my dog’s death, when I went to a diner, I would order “Burger with fries,” or “Philly Cheesesteak”  without thinking much about what I put in my body.  Switching to turkey burger or just salad didn’t work.  Chef’s salad contains processed meat.

This experiment turned out to be a good exercise of mindfulness practice.

Every time I eat, I have to stop and be aware of exactly what I am going to put in my mouth.   I have to be aware what is important for me and why. Then I have to make a fully conscious choice.   I am to be fully responsible for the consequence of my choice.

When I visited my mom in my old country, I forgot to tell her my current diet restriction.  Anyway, special diet as a personal choice is not well-respected in the culture where people experienced starvation a couple generations ago.

In the 2002 film, My Big Fat Greek Wedding,  Toula’s boyfriend Ian is vegetarian.  She tells her mom that Ian doesn’t eat meat.  Her Greek mom understands and says, “Then eat lamb.”

My mom served  “good” beef for dinner.   I knew what it meant to her.   When the country and we were poor, keeping her children well fed was her mission.  Beef was expensive and reserved for special occasions.   So what should I do?   What is my choice?  Do I tell her that I won’t eat meat because my mutt died?  The old woman with a bad hip walked all the way to the butcher shop to buy the gourmet meat.  I didn’t say anything, ate the beef and appreciated it.  It was my choice.

Through this exercise, I’ve learned to be aware of the lives I consume to live.  BLT is not BLT anymore.  A Four-legged creature was killed to feed us.  It is a life taken and given to us.

Ossobuco

I was watching Hannibal (NBC TV show by Bryan Fuller), and one scene hit me.  I will never see Ossobuco in the same way again.  Hannibal was preparing the “meat” for Ossobuco, cutting a leg (it did not belong to four-legged creatures). It was not the scene of cutting a human leg that upset me.  It was the realization that Ossobuco was made of a cow’s leg that shocked me.  I had never thought of a cow’s life taken when I enjoyed Ossobuco.

OSSOBUCO IS PEOPLE #HANNIBALpic.twitter.com/QmJFMtSERW

“I’m very careful about what I put into my body. Which means I end up preparing most meals myself.”  Hannibal says to Will.

I’ve learned mindfulness of eating from Hannibal Lecter.

About Diagnosis

Posted on by SomatiCat

It is useful to have a trail map when you hike unknown territory. It will save you from getting lost at dusk or falling into an abandoned well. When I become familiar with the territory, I’ll know the trail is not the territory, and I’ll start to communicate with creatures in the woods.

DSM V is merely an incomplete and tentative trail map of the vast and unfathomable territory of our psyche.  I hope your therapist is willing to communicate with creatures in the woods without getting lost.

birdy

Dogs Keep a Promise

Posted on by SomatiCat

DogskeepaPromise

Last night I talked a woman through putting her unconscious dog to sleep.  She is somebody I constantly bumped into in Central Park when I took my dog for a weekend morning off leash walk, a doggy friend, not a human friend.  We never saw each other without dogs.  My dog passed about a year ago.  Since then, I haven’t seen her.   That’s how it works.  People with dogs and people without dogs occupy separate worlds in the city.

She was one of those people who lived for their dogs, who won’t leave their dog alone more than a couple of hours.  One of us who don’t trust people, but trust dogs.  One of us who learn what love feels like for the first time through our dogs.

Her dog had a cancer surgery and came back home O.K.  Then suddenly the dog collapsed and lost consciousness.

I’ve been there.  My dog had a brain tumor and one day suddenly collapsed at the ripe age of 14.

She knew there are no options but one.  She just needed confirmation from somebody else.  She had already spent 10 hours in the hospital waiting for her dog to regain consciousness.

Most of time, we know what we should do, and still sometimes we need to convince ourselves to do.  We get  trapped in the fear of should have, could have, might have.  What we need is somebody who hear what we can’t say and mirror it back.

She said she wanted to follow her dog.  I told her I felt the same way. But then after one year I still feel my dog’s love saturating my life on a nice spring day.

Dogs keep a promise a person can’t.
–Dr. Bloom.
A quote from Hannibal by Bryan Fuller

 

The Mysterious Chinese Herb Shop

Posted on by SomatiCat

Every large city has its own Chinatown.  New York City has one.  I went to see my herbalist there today.   The shop is accessible to non-Chinese speaking ordinary Americans.  The lady at the counter speaks fluent English and the herbalist does, too.   It’s a kind of no-nonsense store you won’t walk in to browse.  You need to know what you want.   It’s a traditional chinese medicine version of your corner pharmacy.  Most Chinese customers bring in prescriptions for herbs.

stairs“Is Doctor in?”  I asked the lady.  “Upstairs” the lady said.  I passed the long dispensing counter, where several men were eating lunch, to the back, and opened a door to staircase. The first time I ventured in, it was intimidating in a Diagon Alley kind of way.  It’s not anymore.  The herbalist’s office was on the second floor next to accupuncturists office.

They keeps my chart, just like my physical therapist’s office does.  Sometime I see other patients waiting, most of the time not.

In the office, the Herbalist took my pulse on BOTH wrists.  I don’t understand what he is doing but definitely he is not counting my heartbeat.

The Doc asked many questions, like “How is your bowel movement?”  “How do you sleep?”    He told me to stick my tongue out.  He wrote something in Chinese on the chart, then asked another question.  “Do you like cold weather or hot weather?”   And he pondered and scribbled down more.

He handed me my chart and instructed me to go downstairs to get 10 days supply of herbs.  I asked what was wrong with me.  He mumbled something like “Liver and Spleen weak.”  O.K. whatever, Doc.

I walked down the stairs and handed the chart to the lady.  They have a floor to ceiling old school pharmacy built in cabinet.  A couple of guys started to put together the combinations of herbs in the prescription in an amazing speed and coordination.

herbpackage

Herbs come in packages.  One pouch contains about 10 different kind of herbs.  Some herbs are more expensive than others.  I never got itemized receipt so I never know.  I usually pay between $90-$100 for 10 days of supply including Doc’s fee.

Today’s pouch contains:

  • COIX TEA
  • White Atractylodes tes
  • Codonooposis tes
  • Pyrola tea
  • Albizzia tea
  • Schisandra Tea
  • Alisma Tea
  • Ilex Cornuta Tea
  • And a couple of other mystery herbs if you don’t read Chinese.

herbtea

Those powdered herb make one mean tea.  I sip it throughout the day for 10 days. I go through this 2 or 3 times a year as part of body maintenance routine.  When I feel something is off, it is my way to pay attention to what my body want to tell me.  The effect is mostly subtle.  After 10 days, I usually forget what my major complaint was.  Once in a while, it works like a magic.  Who knows.  I like the taste fo the tea.

I once went to a different herbalist.  The place was much cheaper but I had to actually boil crushed leaves and make real tea.  As a New Yorker, I didn’t have that kind of patience.  My grandma used to plant, grow, harvest, dry, cut, boil and make tea…  Good old days.

Disclaimer:  I don’t speak Chinese, but I studied Traditional Chinese Medicine 101 in college.  So I actually have some vague idea about what the hell the doc is doing.

If you are interested in How Tranditional Chinese Medicine Works,  visit:

http://health.howstuffworks.com/wellness/natural-medicine/chinese/traditional-chinese-medicine.htm

 

A Pigeon and Dandelion

Posted on by SomatiCat

What’s wrong with the girl who kicked at a pigeon?

A group of teenage girls were walking down the street.  It was an early afternoon in the late spring.  A couple of city pigeons were picking up pizza crust scraps on the sidewalk in front of a neighborhood pizza place.   An ordinary pleasant day in a relatively quiet street in Upper East Side.

As they pass by a girl in a plaid skirt kicked at a pigeon.  The pigeon trotted away.   “What’s wrong with you?”  “Gross!”  other girls said.  The girl who kicked at the pigeon didn’t say anything. They walked on, talking as ordinary teenage girls did.  Nothing noteworthy happened.  Just another day in their teenage life.

It was a five second clip too familiar for me not to pick up from the cutting room floor.   It was the nonchalant way the girl kicked at the pigeon that caught my attention.

I was the girl who kicked at pigeons.

When I saw a yellow fluffy dandelion flower on the sidewalk, I stepped on it to squash with the heel of black pumps.  My friend said, “What’s wrong with you?”

I tell you what’s wrong.  That’s how the girl is treated in her family.  That’s how she has learned to treat herself.  It’s so natural that she doesn’t even think something is wrong with the way she reacts to the sight of pigeon, a vulnerable and unimportant creature just doing what pigeons do.  Nobody cares.

The sight of innocent and vulnerable creatures like pigeons and dandelions exposed and defenseless made me feel uneasy.  It’s dangerous to be innocent and vulnerable in the open without fangs and claws to fight back.  I can’t tolerate the prospect of the pigeon-dandelion being attacked, being kicked, being squashed.   So I will be the one who kicks and squashes, so that I don’t have to feel my vulnerability.

I hope the girl who kicked at a pigeon will learn what is wrong is the way she has been treated.

And dandelions are not vulnerable.

dandelion

 

 

Sliver

Posted on by SomatiCat

For the most of my life I tried to fit the expectations of others. For the most of my life I tried to make others fit my expectations. My Teacher said, “Remember, not all people operate in the same way you do. ” It has freed me from the misery endless expectations create. I can’t change how you respond. But I can let you know how I am affected by your response. The rest is up to you.

Sliver

This is how I am. Deal with it. Or if not, leave me where you found me, and walk away.

This is how you are. I deal with it. Or if not, I’ll leave you where I found you, and walk away.

It’s not your fault.

It’s not my fault.

It’s just that this is how I am.

And this is how you are.

That’s how we all should be.

And some of us still keep on feeling our way for a sliver of connection in the treacherous territory between how I am and how you are. Continue reading →

Art of Tea

Posted on by SomatiCat

There are so many people to whom I said, “See you later,” and whom I have never seen since.
Some passed away, others faded away. What is the difference?
You will be a different person next time I see you and I will be a different person next time I see you.
We will never see each other again.

一期一会

It often is translated in English as Once in a Lifetime, and it’s not what it means.
Every moment is the first and the last moment of my life.
Every moment is the first and the last moment of your life.
Every encounter between you and I is once in a lifetime encounter.
I welcome you into my space as if it were the first time you see me,
Because it is the first time you see me.
I treat you as if it were the last time I see you,
Because this will be the lat time I see you.
That’s how we see and serve each other in my old country.

And we share a cup of tea.
In a tiny humble room with a tiny door,
Like the door Alice wanted to go through,
In a quietude of temporary stillness,
No move is carried out without specific intent,
And nonetheless it flows seamlessly
Because every movement happens concurrently.
And we drink a cup of tea
As it is once in a lifetime encounter with you.
I want to savor it with my full presence.
And we share a cup of tea.

© J.U. 2013

The photo was taken in 2010 in NYC.  It is a sculpture by Antony Gormley, not a real person.