The Dharma of Moving....

Since I arrived in Boulder, I have moved nine times in eleven years. Some of these relocations have been welcomed but most have been dreaded....

As a practitioner of the Dharma, I have come to accept that this upending of my nest has become one of my 'practices'. All of the moves have been shrouded by my propensity to look upon the next upheaval with extraordinary hope or fear....

To be honest, more often than not, I took on the search for a new residence with panic and dismay while clinging to the mandatory hope that I would find something charming. Keep in mind a 'cozy home' has certain specifications. Fortunately, I've had mostly 'good karma' finding a new abode.

There has only been one move that landed me in a residence haunted by bad vibes ('Silence of the Lamb' basement cellar) and crushingly too uncozy for me to be readily willing to accept my fate. All my delusions of assuming I knew what was 'best' for me, were met with being at the mercy of the Abode Muses. The entire year that I lived there, my spirit felt incarcerated. I never brought one fresh flower into that home and never cooked a meal....and this was, for me, a total confirmation of my being bereft of whatever good graces move me to do either. The lesson? Hmmm, hard to say. The most I could make of it was that it was excellent Bardo practice; a good 'death before dying' meditation.

This summer I will face another move....Yesterday, I stumbled upon a wonderful Dharma Teaching:

"Don't look back,
Don't look forward,
Don't alter your basic existence,
Don't be afraid
There is no other instruction!

Don't prolong the past,
Don't invite the future,
Don't alter your innate wakefulness,
Don't fear appearances
Apart from that, there is not a damned thing!"
--Patrul Rinpoche

The invitation is there for me to not hope for a chateau nor fear a dilapidated hovel. 'Don't fear appearances'?....I'm sorry but ranch-style homes and mobile homes scare the crap out of me. Patrul's instruction puts me smack into 'middle-ground' territory--not too tight, not too loose; the ultimate aspiration to be here now...with whatever arises.

I have no idea how this next move will play out. For all I know, I may be led to move to Mozambique or reside in a trailer park festooned with plastic pink flamingoes on the front lawns of my neighbors. Could it be that if I put aside my aversion to plastic flamingoes (trusted my Inner-Plastic-Flamingo) to have its way with me, that another kind of wisdom could show itself? Is there really wisdom to anything the color of beige? Are there gems of life buried beneath my constrictive ideas of what is considered beautiful, charming, suitable? Could I really live on tract-housing grounds and not solely identify with all that is has come to mean for me: banal ugliness, catastrophic visual purgatory, death knoll of creativity; the ultimate finale for having reached my limit for the tolerance of 'different.'

Interestingly, one of the bedrocks of the Dharma is the notion of 'impermanence.' Nothing lasts forever...not the good, the bad or the ugly. In between the cracks of my rigid ideas of what I need or want is verdant soil awaiting my 'not' planting my small and limiting seeds of preferred expectations. Both Beauty and the Beast have their basic goodness, their being two sides of the same coin...their being one and the same.

Could it be that a plastic pink flamingo is in fact my next Teacher; the latest one, the newest one? You will have to excuse me but I have to go. I need to comb some neighborhoods and find that flamingo. I need to find that flamingo and make friends with it--

"Let everything happen to you,
Beauty and terror.
Just keep going.
No feeling is final."
--Rilke


Gracie Garp