How My Cat Taught Me About Buddhism
By Emma Suttie, D.Ac, AP
Cats are the ultimate Buddhists.
When I first arrived in Panama many years ago, a friend arrived at my door one day with a burlap sack and handed it to me. Inside it was a tiny kitten, about the size of a tennis ball. He was filthy, missing patches of fur and had a huge cut on his tiny pink nose. I instantly fell in love with this baby cat and from then on my life completely revolved around his comings and goings.
Little Pepe soon after I got him at about 5 weeks old. Who could resist that face??
Being In The Present
I used to love to watch him. No matter what he was doing, he was always so in the moment. I never saw him sitting around brooding over the past of worrying about the future as people so often do. He was always absolutely engrossed in whatever he was doing at that particular moment. He was always reveling in the present.
Seeing The World As It Is
My little cat was living his life, fully in the present. He wasn't avoiding certain situations or experiences. He was taking life as it came and, seeing the world as it really was. As human beings tend to do, we avoid things that are painful or unpleasant and crave experiences and things that give us pleasure which creates a constant cycle of unhappiness. Pepe was living the hell out of every moment, no matter what was happening.
Little Pepe - fearless explorer, supreme hunter, and the ultimate Buddha.
Everything Is A Meditation
I used to watch him while he was hunting, often birds, and he was so focussed and almost relaxed as he stalked them... it really seemed to me that everything that he did was a meditation. He was always mindful and present and everything he did seemed like the thing he was DESIGNED, MADE to do. It was so effortless, and even though I often had to save birds from his clutches, I loved to watch him because it was like watching water moving effortlessly through his environment.
In Harmony With His Environment
Pepe always seemed like he was perfectly designed to blend seamlessly into his environment. Like millions of years of honing the perfect cat characteristics had reached its equinox with this one, small white cat. He effortlessly climbed the highest trees, plucked birds out of the air with one perfectly calculated jump. He and the environment were one, communicating through some silent nonverbal language, like a song being written on the fly, of the most beautiful music you have ever heard. Music you could never have conceived of because it is divine in nature. There was an ease about his movements and demeanor, and he always seemed relaxed and completely content, like he was made for his environment, and it was made for him.
Equanimity
I never saw things like fear (which might have done him some good sometimes, oh the things he would get into!!) from my little cat. He was always perfectly equanimous. I never saw him reflecting, brooding or looking anxious, he always seemed perfectly at peace. My life in those days was filled with such dramatic highs and lows and I always would look at my little cat and wish I could be more like him. Good and bad things didn't happen, only things. It is us that judge them as being good or bad. Pepe seemed to have equanimity at all times, no matter what might have been going on. I admit, there were many times I envied him, wishing for the balance that eluded me and seemed inherent in him.
Impermanence
It always amazed me how Pepe could be so completely engrossed in any activity and seamlessly flow into being just as engrossed in the next thing as it came. I never saw him stop something he might have found enjoyable and get sad that it was over. This seems to be a purely human thing. He was completely able to move from one thing to the other just being and taking it all as it came. Not being sad about things that had gone or worrying about what was coming. He was all about anicca (the Pali word that represents that all things, including the self, are impermanent and constantly changing). Change is so difficult for many people and I have certainly struggled with it. Pepe however, seemed not to even notice, he was able to go with the natural from of things.
Wisdom
I have had a lot of change, upheaval, highs and lows in my life. I have bene trying in my own way, to live it to the fullest. So many of these Buddhist concepts and teachings are difficult for me, and I am constantly working on them. I find that whenever I am feeling something strongly (which is often), or struggling with my feelings (which happens on a regular basis), wondering things like why bad things happen to good people or get worried or depressed about the state of the world, all I have to do is go outside and watch my little cat. He is a wonderful reminder that things aren't good or bad, they just ARE, and it is my feelings and judgements about them that cause me unnecessary suffering and pain. My little cat always seems content, in the moment and completely at peace with himself and with life. With all that I have "learned" in many decades on this planet, I realize that my little cat Pepe is still one of my best teachers.
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If you would like to read about my experience with Vipassana meditation (and my foray into Buddhist concepts and teachings), you can read these - My Ten Day Vipassana Meditation, & Vipassana 2.0. I hope you enjoy them. :)
Alignment - Part 1
By Steven Lubka
I write this in the beginning of the year 2016. In the last several decades we have experienced increasingly rapid and dramatic changes in the ways in which most humans live on this beautiful planet. We have developed incredible technologies that have made the impossible , possible. Our environments are filled with invisible wavelengths of light (wireless internet technologies) which transmit the sum of human knowledge instantaneously to most points on the planet. With nuclear energy we generate power from invisible particles on a scale previously unheard of. We have discovered ways to alter the genetic information of plants and animals, to travel through the skies at incredible speeds, to travel into outer space, and many other feats which were delegated to the realm of imagination 100 years ago.
From a certain perspective one can view all of these inventions as coming from a pure seed of potential, a dream in the collective mind of man. Of course it is our nature to attempt the impossible. Of course it is our nature to dream, and yet we now find ourselves dealing with the fallout of all of these technological breakthroughs. Our inventions have changed our lifestyles and the face of the earth and these changes have happened faster than the biologic systems of the Earth and the human body can handle.
Our bodies evolved over millions of years sheltered in the magnetic resonance of the planet. As we slept on the earth and walked barefoot on her landscape we were constantly attuned to her vibrations and frequencies. Our science is now discovering how essential our attunement to these magnetic fields are for the function of our cellular health. Magnetic frequencies and light cycles impact every aspect of our biology down to the cellular level, and yet in a hundred years we have completely disconnected from these nourishing vibrations in favor of artificial sources. We have migrated from a life lived in communion with the Earth and all her medicine to one that is lived in an artificially lit indoor environment that is becoming increasingly saturated by the electric fields and wireless radiations of our technological brilliance.
We once woke up with the sun and moved through complex natural environments to fulfill the tasks of our daily lives. As we moved, the very act of movement caused the vital fluids of our bodies to circulate to all the organs and muscles. The heart is not the only mover of blood. The contractions of muscles pull blood and circulate nutrients to all parts of our physical form. Yet now we sit and stare into screens endlessly, robbing ourselves of the replenishing aspects of movement and the joys of it.
At night darkness fell and our activities ceased with it. We learned the wisdom of having a time for darkness and inactivity, something which our industries which strive for growth at all times could serve to remember. The period of darkness experienced at night is a critical as the period of light experienced during the day. The morning sun triggers a massive shift in hormonal function as the bodies shifts into its daytime processes, and similarly the onset of darkness triggers the onset of our nocturnal processes.
The Chinese knew the importance of Yin and Yang, and what can occur when these forces are out of balance. In their language I would say our light environment has become Yin deficient because of our use of artificial lighting. I also find our constant illumination of our world to be symbolic of the masculine conquest of nature. We have created eternal daytime, we have conquered darkness, and we have lost touch with her feminine receptive nature. We have lost the ancient experience of stories told around a fire. and of quiet conversations with our loved ones under the night sky. In scientific terms we are impairing the product of melatonin and damaging our eyes via blue light toxicity during the dark portion of the photoperiod.
These are just some of the changes that have taken place in the last hundred years and I cite them now as an example of how our way of living has shifted so dramatically and so quickly. As a result of all these changes a general malaise has come to afflict the human population. We have become numb to the sound of it as most take this state of being as “normal” for it is all they have ever known. How does one know they are sick if they have never been well? All you need to do is turn on a television ( but I do not recommend it) to hear the advertisements for medications for depression, anxiety, cancer, autoimmune disorders, diabetes, MS, and a variety of other diseases which were unheard in ancient societies and among hunter gatherer populations.
However, the innate intelligence of life is stirring within us and many people are becoming increasingly disillusioned with this culture we have manufactured. A great awareness for physical healing and restoration is emerging and I feel it is one of the most important ways that we pay homage to the Earth, by healing the gift of the body we have been given. Through the miracle which is the Internet I have watched for years as people from all over the world have gathered in virtual space to find solutions and it is here in this virtual realm that I am sharing my contribution to the whole. We can’t say that the times we live in are boring!
The body is a complex system, a unified whole made of many parts. In this way it reflects a fundamental principle inherent to all levels of creation. All manners of form in this existence are simultaneously a singular whole and the many parts which it is composed of. This is an important reference point to hold when one attempts to bring their body back into a state of health. The state of health is the singular holistic manifestation of all parts working in harmony. So where does one begin in their journey? For each person different pieces will hold different magnitudes of importance. This is individual and must be discovered by the individual. What is most important for one person will not typically be what is most important for another and I don’t truly find there to be a hierarchy of the various systems. The heart is not intrinsically more important than the liver. The brain is not intrinsically more important than the gut. The alignment of the spine not intrinsically more important than the circadian biology. All of these things work together, much as rivers don’t exist without the land they flow through nor without the clouds which replenish the waters of this magnificent biosphere.
I say all of this and yet now I must create a starting point for one cannot address the whole without starting with one of it’s parts. The Chinese viewed a human life as something of great value. The human being was seen as a conduit between heaven and earth, between form and formlessness. In other words the human being was bridge between two worlds. In my eyes nothing manifests this role or relationship better than the spinal column. The spine is something of incredible function. It not only is the literal foundation of our physical form but it also is the ground through which an immense of amount information travels in the forms of nerve signaling and sensory input from all parts of the system. It is the central axis of the body. A properly aligned spine yields a properly aligned being who is a conduit of both heaven and earth. I find that the spine is also the antenna of the body and when the antenna is calibrated properly it allows one to become receptive to “information” from the greater systems we are a part of. It allows one to receive “information” on the level of frequency from the magnetic field of the earth, the frequencies of the stars and cosmic bodies, and from the interconnected biosphere of life on this planet. A hunched and collapsed spine is a sign that the organism is heading towards death, yet most live in this state from a young age now.
This concludes the first of this three part series. In the next part I will outline some basic habits one can cultivate to to easily improve one’ alignment. In the third I will show how to perform a basic cranial-spinal reset and delve into some further discussion of our motivation to heal ourselves, where this motivation is useful, and where it is limited.
Alignment Part 1 : Chinese Medicine Living
*Images
The beautiful featured image from picturesdotnews.com
Earth image from Mother Earth by Commander on Youtube.com
Tree image from veganfeministnetwork.com
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