So,
The Dutch theologian,
Henry Nouwen,
Wrote this,
Nobody escapes being wounded.
We all are wounded people,
Whether physically,
Emotionally,
Mentally,
Or spiritually.
The main question is not how we can hide our wounds so we don't have to be embarrassed,
But how we can put our woundedness in the service of others.
When our wounds cease to be a source of shame and become a source of healing,
We have become wounded healers.
Mostly,
When we look around in our Zoom screen,
Or we're interacting in the world with our friends and partners and strangers and family members,
Generally people that we interact with,
On the surface,
Appear really happy and balanced.
Perhaps I seem really balanced to you.
And mainly,
That's true.
But often I'm out of balance,
And frustrated,
And despairing also.
I don't show this all the time.
But what helps me not feel ashamed,
Or like I have to hide,
Is that I know that everyone experiences being out of balance.
Everyone on this call,
Everyone in the world,
We all have scars,
Wounds that we carry.
Again,
No one tells us that everyone has scar stories,
And often we're embarrassed by them,
Or we try to hide them and cover them over.
But when we share our scars,
Something remarkable occurs.
Our scar stories can become a source of healing,
Instead of a source of shame.
Here's a story that really illustrates that.
It's the story of the Golden Buddha.
In 1957,
An entire monastery in Thailand was being relocated by a group of monks.
One day,
They were moving a giant clay Buddha,
When one of the monks noticed a large crack in the clay.
On closer investigation,
He saw there was a golden light through the crack.
The monk used a hammer and chisel to chip away at the clay exterior,
Until he revealed that the statue was in fact made of solid gold.
It was later discovered that this was the largest pure gold statue in all of Southeast Asia.
It is believed that it was covered in clay by Thai monks several hundred years ago,
To protect it from the difficult times.
Much in the same way,
We cover over our innate purity in our difficult times.
We develop our armoring,
Our defenses,
And our strategies.
We pile upon layer upon layer of clay,
Over our own golden light.
So we are all covering over our potential in some way.
You know,
We create these clay masks that we wear throughout the day to make it through our difficulties.
And the suffering that we experience happens when we identify and we believe that we are the mask,
The covering,
Our defenses.
We come to believe that our wounds,
Our scars,
Our illness are who we are.
And we forget the luminosity of our heart,
The gold that is our essence.
The Buddha's whole life,
These teachings are about remembering that essence.
Thich Nhat Hanh,
The Zen teacher,
Used to talk about suffering and happiness as not being enemies.
He would say that they are inter-are,
They inter-be.
Suffering is made of happiness,
And happiness is made of suffering.
It's like the lotus flower.
The lotus flower grows in mud.
Without mud,
There is no lotus flower.
And so looking at the flower,
The lotus flower,
You see the mud.
And looking at the mud,
You see the future lotus.
This is the teaching of inter-being.
And it's hard.
It's hard to open up and show our scars to our friends,
Our community of practitioners.
But when we do,
We start a conversation.
When we do,
We consciously or unconsciously are saying to one another,
I understand because I'm like you.
Nothing is more powerful than seeing myself in the face of another.
Nothing is more powerful than hearing the words,
Me too.
Nothing.
I've mentioned many times that this practice is about remembering.
We show up each week,
Some part of us knowing that we have access to this awareness,
This loving awareness,
But we forget.
We forget how to get there.
So we explore it together,
And what we're doing is we're chipping away at the clay that covers over our gold.
To access our wholeness,
We need to shine the light of awareness in the places of our hurt,
The cracks,
Our wounds.
And if we take the time and we bring attention to the woundedness inside of us,
To see what's really going on,
We're building capacity to be with our vulnerability,
To be with seeing our wounds.
And by seeing them,
That begins the journey of healing them.
And we all need healing at different times in our lives.
Sometimes we need healing for physical illness.
At other times,
We need to heal the traumas that we've suffered and find ways to release the difficulties of the past that we carry in our body.
We need to release the struggles and the emotions brought about by the conflicts we have and the pain we experience from simply being human on this planet.
To heal,
We can't reject our illness or our grief or use anger and aversion to try to push them away or get rid of them.
Instead,
We have to bring this tender care,
This energy of healing to all that is sick or torn or broken or lost within us.
And sometimes the broken places,
All they ask from us is that we become present with them.
We should never underestimate our power to heal when we step toward the difficulties with courage and with love.
These practices that we're doing,
The meditation,
Really the whole spiritual journey that we're on,
It's been described as opening,
Opening,
Letting go,
Letting go.
So our practice is to begin to recognize and to become more aware in subtle and maybe not so subtle ways how we push our inner life away.
And recognizing the stories that we have,
The resentments,
The blame,
And the willingness to feel under the stories where there's a wound,
Where vulnerability lives.
Letting go is not buying into the story.
We let go of the story and just come into presence with the energy,
The felt sense of what it's like when the story is living in us.
And we breathe and we give it room.
The basic understanding is that presence with our vulnerability,
With our pain,
Is the gateway to growth.
When we experience presence at the edges of our comfort zone,
And we meet it and we soften,
We recognize it and we soften,
This is how we heal.
We sense what's happening and we just feel it and be with it.
So I'll close with these words from the poet Rilke.
Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princes and princesses who are only waiting to see us act just once with beauty and courage.
Perhaps everything that frightens us is in its deepest essence something helpless that wants our love.
Thank you.
