The Dharma of an Undefended Life

"Dharma is not about credentials. It’s not about how many practices you’ve done, or how peaceful you can make your mind. It’s not about being in a community where you feel safe or enjoying the cachet of being a 'Buddhist.' It’s not even about accumulating teachings, empowerments, or 'spiritual accomplishments.' It’s about how naked you’re willing to be with your own life, and how much you’re willing to let go of your masks and your armor and live as a completely exposed, undefended, and open human person."  Tricycle Daily Dharma

Okay, so I know this is supposed to be a blog about my experience of living a month in Minneapolis with my daughter. But it so happens that also includes the internal journey (is there any other kind?). So I start today's post with a "Daily Dharma" from Tricycle Magazine. I really love this quotation since I've been living with the intention (along with so many other intentions) of living authentically, exposed, undefended.  I sometimes feel that living as an exposed and undefended person leads to aliveness, but I also find that, for me,  there is a fine line between feeling alive and indulging in unnecessarily destructive thought patterns--that I sometimes drag myself through a kind of house of horrors of the mind (an image articulated by Sandra Barnard in one of her talks).  


But there's no time for any of that today. My daughter was up much of the night (until 3 am) throwing up. I admit that, in a less-than-stellar parenting moment, I stopped going into the bathroom with her every 20 minutes to hold her head after about 1:45 am (I no longer had to clean up after her since nothing much was coming out at this point), though I stroked her back when she came back to bed, where I cooed that this wouldn't last forever. Not that she believed me. I certainly couldn't blame her for that.  So, no skating this morning, and instead some tentative liquid and soup consumption, reading, and watching "Chopped" and "Cupcake Wars."  The day also involved several trips to the grocery store for water with electrolytes, soup, crackers, and a few other sundry items. Did I mention that there is record-breaking heat here in Minneapolis? 102. 

As I rode my bike the three minutes up the street to the YWCA this afternoon, I had another fine-line moment: on the one hand, I felt all the excitement of being in a new place with the potential to have new experiences and connect with new people--to open up, be undefended moment by moment-- my experience here in Minneapolis serving as a metaphor for my life at large. On the other hand (and at the risk of seeming overly-dramatic), I felt the visceral fear of stepping into an unknown life, with its unknown outcome. I'm still missing and mourning the life I knew, after all.  I rode out onto the street, no helmet, yoga mat under my arm, and felt the hot wind blow through my hair.